


With Coffee Spoons (Assorted Ficlets)

by semperama



Series: Tumblr Ficlets - Pinto [1]
Category: Star Trek RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-21
Updated: 2015-12-31
Packaged: 2018-03-18 20:37:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 60
Words: 44,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3583176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/semperama/pseuds/semperama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a collection of prompt ficlets and other odds and ends that were originally posted to tumblr.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Wear Me Out

**Author's Note:**

> This is inspired by Chris wearing jeans with very worn-looking knees in [this](http://bluekook.tumblr.com/post/104337020647) Into the Woods interview. Warnings: hair pulling, light verbal humiliation, D/s undertones.

Chris is about three steps inside Zach’s front door when Zach’s fingers are in his hair, twisting it into it harshly and forcing his head back until he gets the picture and falls to his knees. He had been hoping for this, looking forward to it the moment he found out he was going to have to fly to New York for press obligations. He knows Zach could hear the shaking in his voice on the phone. He knows Zach was probably imagining this too when he told him to come over tonight. It’s been too long.

“I think those are the jeans you were wearing last time,” Zach says. Chris sits back on his heels so Zach can see the white, worn patches on his knees and know that he’s right. “Oh, they are. Did you do that on purpose?”

Chris swallows and nods, as best as he can with Zach still gripping his hair, keeping his face upturned so he can watch him.

“You’re such a good boy, Christopher,” Zach murmurs, his voice low and rough. “So good for me. What do you think people are going to think when they see that you’ve worn out the knees of your jeans?”

This time, he shakes his head, not trusting himself to speak. Zach chuckles and releases Chris’s hair so he can slide his fingers down the side of his face, then rub his thumb across his lips.

“They’re going to think you’ve been doing exactly this. Kneeling here in front of me. Desperate for what I’m about to give you. You want it, baby?”

Chris’s trembling fingers reach for Zach’s belt automatically, and Zach doesn’t stop him, just watches him with dark, hungry eyes until his pants are around his ankles and Chris has him in hand. His expression flickers just a little when Chris licks his lips.

“God, you were made for this, weren’t you? For being on your knees.” He pushes his thumb into Chris’s mouth, just briefly, and then lifts his hand and combs his fingers back through his hair, tugging Chris up and toward his already leaking cock. “I want you to take your time. No rushing. Your knees better be sore by the end. Maybe you’ll finally wear holes right through those jeans.”

Chris can’t bite back his moan. He wants that too. He wants to ruin his pants worshipping Zach. He wants to ruin his body. He wants to ruin his heart. He wants to take everything Zach gives him, and he wants to give back everything he has, until there’s nothing left.

Just as he leans in though, Zach stops him, pulling at his hair until tears spring into his eyes. “Oh, and Chris?”

Chris looks up at him with wide eyes, ready to give his assent to whatever request is coming next.

“Wear these jeans to your interview tomorrow. I want everyone to know.”


	2. What Now?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for JunoMagic, for the following prompt: "Chris is in love with Zach, but is too scared to admit that/act on it. (Like, seriously, who suddenly discovers they are bisexual at age 34? Zach's going to laugh.) Zach realizes what's going on. How does he help Chris? First time sex appreciated. HEA, please."

“I knew for a while, you know,” Zach says quietly, into the skin of Chris’s neck, right before he drags his teeth over it.

Chris shivers and arches his back, trying to get some contact with Zach’s body below the waist. Zach hovers just out of reach though, as much to be a tease as because he wants to take this slow. He doesn’t want to freak Chris out. It’s one thing to admit that he wants him, and to crawl in bed with him, but it’s another thing entirely to come in contact with another dick for the first time. They need to not rush this.

“I think I knew before you knew,” Zach continues, moving his mouth to Chris’s chest, then pauses to flick his tongue over one taut nipple. He smiles when that elicits another shiver. “The way you looked at me sometimes…no one has ever looked at me like that.”

Chris fingers find Zach’s chin, urging him to look up so he can see his face. His eyes are wide, like he still can’t believe they are in bed together, or that any of this is happening. “How come you never said anything?” he asks.

“I…” Zach shakes his head and bites his lip, not quite sure he can explain it. “I wanted you to be sure.” He curls one hand around Chris’s rib cage and lets the warmth and solidness comfort him. Chris is really here. They are really here together. “I thought if I pushed you too fast, you might run.”

“I might have. I didn’t…I couldn’t admit…” Chris trails off, and his gaze darts away for a moment before he forces it back. He breathes in and out slowly, smoothing hair off Zach’s forehead. “How long?” he asks, finally.

“Nuh-uh,” Zach says. “Let’s not do the ‘what if’ thing, okay?” If they start thinking about how long ago they could have been together, it’ll drive them crazy. It’ll at least drive Zach crazy. He spent so much time thinking maybe Chris just had a ‘mancrush’, maybe that’s just the way he is with close friends, maybe he was going through a phase. But then on the first day of shooting for the third film, he walked into the table read and saw Chris’s face light up like a Christmas tree, and he just knew. It had always been real. Chris loves him. Chris is in love with him. The thought still makes his heart pound.

“Okay,” Chris says, breaking him out of his reverie. “Okay, no ‘what ifs’. Just ‘what nows’.”

Zach can handle ‘what now’. He grins, just a tad ferally, and lets his hand drift down to Chris’s hip, then ghosts his fingers over his thigh. “Now, we can do anything you want.”

“Anything?” Chris asks, sounding both scared and delighted.

“Anything,” Zach confirms.

Chris lets his head fall back on the pillow, then juts his hips off the bed again. This time Zach doesn’t move away, letting Chris grind against him until his breath is coming fast through his nose. “I want everything,” he groans.

Zach’s smile turns soft, and he leans in to kiss the corner of Chris’s eye, letting tenderness overwhelm him for a moment. “You’ve got it, baby.”


	3. You Got What I Need

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for Nostalgia-in-Starlight, for the following prompt: "Super sweet snuggling after a long day."

Chris’s weak spots are pretty out there in the open. People know that he needs to eat every three hours or his brain shuts down and he gets grumpy. People know he has a maximum amount of time he can spend with people before he gets exhausted. People know he struggles with overthinking things and sometimes needs a nudge to get out of his own head.

Zach’s weak spots, on the other hand, are all covered up. At first, Chris wasn’t even sure that he had any, though there were a few clues—his need to escape to the jungle every now and then, his never-missed therapy appointment, an offhand comment here or there about his childhood. Chris has always admired Zach for being calm and collected and confident and strong, but the truth is that he isn’t perfect either. And though he spends so much time taking care of other people—Chris especially—sometimes he needs someone to take care of him too.

Today is one of those days. Shooting didn’t go so well, and Zach has a tendency to be really hard on himself when he makes mistakes, which only leads to a downward spiral of horribleness. He has been snappish and standoffish and generally a huge grump, and while Chris gave him a wide berth on set, the moment they get home he is determined to make it all better. He knows exactly what Zach needs.

He grabs Zach’s wrist almost the second they step through the door together and starts tugging him toward the bedroom. “Come on.”

“Chris,” Zach sighs, resisting a little, half-heartedly trying to pull his hand away. “I’m not in the mood.”

“I know,” Chris says, gentler. “Just come here.”

Zach grumbles all the way to the bedroom, grumbles while he’s taking off his shoes, grumbles when Chris lays down and holds out his arms, but the moment he gets in bed and half-sprawls across Chris’s chest and Chris gets his arms around him, he lets out a long sigh, like he has been holding his breath all day and can finally breathe again.

They are opposites in this way. When Chris is upset, he needs to be left alone. He needs space and peace and quiet and his journal. Zach, on the other hand, needs human contact—as much as he can get—but he won’t ask for it or seek it out. The first real fight they had, Chris let him stew for days thinking space was what he needed, and things almost got ugly, until finally Chris just put his arms around Zach in one last desperate attempt to smooth things over, and that was what calmed the storm. Since then, he has known that the best thing he can do when Zach gets in one of his moods is just to hold him.

He holds him now, rubbing soft circles on his back with one hand, combing the fingers of the other through Zach’s soft hair. Zach sighs again and burrows a little deeper against him.

“Sorry,” he says quietly, after a few moments, and Chris lets out a short huff of a laugh. Zach always apologizes for his bad moods, like he thinks that being human is somehow a failure on his part.

“Don’t be sorry,” Chris says. “You’re allowed to have bad days.”

“I wish I didn’t though,” he grouses, then turns his face into Chris’s neck.

“I wish you didn’t too. You would always be Happy Zach if it was up to me.”

There is silence for a moment, and then Zach’s hand is sliding up Chris’s side, under his shirt, drawing aimless patterns on his skin. “You make me happy,” he says quietly. “Always.”

“Good.” Chris turns his head and presses a kiss to Zach’s forehead. “That’s my job.”


	4. New York City, I'll See You Soon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for Jouissant for the prompt "their first conversation after Sundance".
> 
> Warnings: polyamory (Zach is with Miles as well as Chris)

“Oh good, you made it okay,” is the first thing Chris says when he answers the phone. He knows the snow isn’t supposed to start coming down until tomorrow, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t worried about Zach. He would have been worried if there wasn’t going to be any snow at all. He is the kind of guy who will call Zach in the middle of the night just because he woke up with “a bad feeling”, so he definitely appreciates the courtesy call.

“Yep, just touched down,” Zach confirms. “You’re the first one I called.”

Chris’s first instinct is to ignore the way his heart flutters. Then he remembers how good it felt to be with Zach again, and how happy they were for those too-short 48 hours, and he decides not to ignore it after all. “I miss you already,” he says instead.

“I miss you too,” Zach murmurs, and his complete lack of hesitation makes Chris grin so wide his face hurts.

“April’s too far away. Please tell me I can see you again before that.”

There is a moment of silence on the other end of the line where all Chris can hear is the chatter of voices in the background, other passengers chattering and shuffling and opening overhead bins. This time Chris’s heart skips a beat for an entirely different reason. He shifts his phone to his other ear and wipes his sweaty palm on his thigh.

“How about…the end of February? That’s about halfway.”

Chris lets out the breath he was holding. “Yeah. You want me to come out there, or…?”

“No,” Zach says too quickly. Way too quickly. “No, I’ll…I’ll come see you.”

Chris shifts the phone to his other ear again. He realizes he has been standing stock still in the middle of his bedroom staring at the wall since the conversation, and he doesn’t even remember why he walked into the room in the first place. 

“I thought you said Miles was okay with it, Zach,” he hears his mouth saying, completely without his conscious approval. He doesn’t want to give Zach the chance to shatter their beautiful Sundance weekend with a word.

“He is,” Zach says. “He is. I swear. I wouldn’t lie to you about that.”

Chris’s shoulders slump with relief. “Then what—?”

“It’s just…It’s harder for me when you visit me in New York.” Zach is talking slowly, like he does when he doesn’t really want to admit something. “It’s always so easy to picture you fitting into my life here, and I miss you that much more when you leave.”

Chris thinks about it, for a moment. He thinks about saying screw it, packing up and moving across the country so they can do this thing for real. He thinks about how hard it is every time he has to leave Zach, or Zach has to leave him, and how happy they could be together.

Every time this comes up he tells himself it’s better this way—he has his space, and it’s more romantic in a way, and they have lasted years like this, surviving on phone calls and visits and, in this case, a rendezvous in Park City. But maybe it’s time to reconsider his definition of the word “better”.

“Do you want me to move?” he asks quietly.

Zach sighs. “I would never make you move for me.”

“But what if I wanted to?” Chris asks.

There is silence on Zach’s end again. Muffled announcements play in multiple languages in the background.

“If you wanted to,” Zach says, a little skeptically, “then I would say we should talk about it in February.”

The fact that he is overwhelmingly relieved that Zach is even willing to discuss it tells Chris all he needs to know about how much he actually wants this. He didn’t expect to feel so much like there is a light at the end of the tunnel. He didn’t even know he was in a tunnel.

“Okay,” he says. “We’ll talk about it then.”

“I’ll buy my plane ticket tomorrow,” Zach says, and there is a smile in his voice now. “And I’ll text you when I get home.”

“Thanks, man.” The sick feeling Chris had in his stomach a moment ago is gone. He shuffles his feet happily against the hardwood, a mockery of a jig that he would feel embarrassed about if Zach could see him right now. “Hey, tell the kiddo hi for me.”

He can practically hear the eye roll in Zach’s voice. “I will. I’m sure he’ll thank you for letting me come home before the blizzard.”

“Yeah, right. He knows as well as I do that no one lets you do anything.”

Zach chuckles. “It’s true. Anyway, I’ll talk to you later, Pine.”

The line goes dead, and Chris hangs up and then falls back onto his bed, smiling up at the ceiling. Maybe he shouldn’t count his chickens before they hatch, because he is sure Zach will have many responsible and insincere arguments prepared by February, but spring seems like a good time to move. He could be settled in before filming starts.

He could be with Zach again soon, for good this time.


	5. Show Me Your Teeth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for physicistic on tumblr, for the prompt: "pie's teeth".
> 
> Warnings: biting in a sexual context (Chris is the one doing the biting)

Chris leans in and drags his teeth across the skin of Zach’s neck for what seems like the thousandth time, and this time Zach can’t take it anymore. Well-established bedroom dynamics be damned—he is going to go out of his fucking mind if Chris doesn’t stop teasing him.

“God, just do it,” he hisses. He meant for it to sound irritated or maybe a little put out, but there is a sort of pleading note there that immediately makes blood rush to his face.

“Do what?” Chris asks, as if he doesn’t know. He pulls back a little to give Zach a confused look, but his hips don’t slow for a minute, and Zach digs his fingers into the flexing muscles of his thighs like he hopes it’ll help him maintain control.

“Just fucking bite me already,” he says. He even cocks his head to the side a little bit to give Chris better access, offering up the juncture of his neck and his shoulder on a silver platter. It should be weirder than it actually is, flipping the script like this. Pre-Chris Zach would never have considered letting someone bite him, and he certainly would never have asked for it, and yet here he is, dying to feel Chris’s teeth sinking into him, hurting him, marking him. Fuck, what is happening to him?

“You want me to bite you?” Chris asks, sounding dazed. This time, he does lose his rhythm for a second, but it’s fine, because it gives Zach the opportunity to fuck up into him for a few thrusts. He hoped it would make him feel like he has some of the control back, but it doesn’t.

“Obviously you want to. You’ve been nibbly all night.” Zach grabs two handfuls of Chris’s ass and helps him get back into the rhythm. “You’re driving me crazy. So just…”

The grin that blossoms on Chris’s face is unbearably self-satisfied, and Zach has half a mind to say forget it and flip them over and fuck the smugness right out of him, but then Chris runs his tongue over his teeth and his eyes zero on Zach’s neck, and that’s it. Zach is done for.

“I should make you beg for it,” Chris says. His voice is pure raspy, smoky sex, and it’s a wonder Zach’s brain isn’t leaking out of his ears. He should be indignant now—pissed even—but the pleas are already on the tip of his tongue, and if Chris asked him one more time, they’d probably come streaming out, even if he would hate himself for it later.

Luckily, Chris doesn’t ask him. He is still fucking himself on Zach’s dick with expert rolls of his hips, and he doesn’t even miss a beat when he leans in and sets his teeth against the meat of Zach’s shoulder. At first, he doesn’t bite down—just lets Zach feel the pinpricks of his canines and the tiniest hint of pressure, his mouth just resting there until Zach thinks he is going to yell in frustration.

In a fit of desperation, he puts wraps his arms around Chris’s back and tugs him forward a little, then plants his feet and snaps his hips up hard, making Chris groan against his skin and then finally, finally bite down.

“Oh fuck,” Zach says. Chris doesn’t play around, doesn’t nip him gently and then let up like Zach might have expected. He latches on, his mouth clamped down not hard enough to break the skin, but hard enough that for a moment Zach can only focus on the pain above everything else. Zach thrusts up again instinctively, almost like he is trying to buck Chris off, but Chris doesn’t let up, not even when Zach starts fucking him in earnest, holding him steady and pounding up into him while a stream of profanity falls from his lips.

Finally, Chris’s mouth falls open on a moan, and Zach thinks he can actually feel the bruise forming as the blood rushes back into his abused flesh. And just like that, he’s coming so hard he sees white, emptying himself into Chris’s body, pain and pleasure chasing each other across his nerve endings. Chris follows him soon after, spilling across Zach’s stomach with a muffled sob.

For long moments after, neither of them moves, and Zach can only focus on the throbbing pain in his shoulder. He waits for himself to start freaking out and overanalyzing, but it doesn’t happen. It feels good. The pain is almost comforting, because he knows it came from Chris, and he knows he wanted it, and the thought of looking in the mirror and seeing the mark Chris left on him makes him shudder, makes his dick twitch one last time.

“Good?” Chris asks, lifting his head a little so he can look Zach in the eye.

“Really good,” Zach confirms, reaching up to touch Chris’s face. “I may even let you do it again sometime.”

Chris grins a toothy grin, and then leans in and nips gently at Zach’s jaw, and yeah, Zach gets the feeling he may have created a monster, but he can’t bring himself to care.


	6. You're My Lighthouse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for Hopeforyouyet, who submitted the following prompt: "They're in a long-term open poly relationship and Miles is OK with it." Based on a headcanon from thatmysticbafflingwonder (babykid528).
> 
> Warnings: polyamory (of course).

“Ah, this is, uhh—” Chris sucks in a sharp breath, bites down on his bottom lip for a moment, and waits for the burn to subside before he goes on. “This is probably not the time to ask, but Miles knows you and I were going to be together on this trip, right?”

Zach looks like he doesn’t know whether he wants to smile or smack Chris across the face, and Chris can’t say he blames him. They maybe should have talked about this…basically any time other than the moment Zach started pushing inside him. It has been months since they have been together like this, alone in a hotel room with no one to interrupt them, and they should be savoring it. But the fact that it has been months is part of the reason Chris is insecure in the first place.

“You mean is Miles still okay with the arrangement that has been in place since before I started dating him over a year ago? Yeah, Chris, he is.” It’s remarkable how calm he sounds even as he is bottoming out. Chris stares at the powerful line of his shoulders, the thoughtful pout of his lips, and takes a moment to appreciate how lucky he is.

“I’m sorry, I just—oh, fuck, don’t move yet. It’s been a while.” Chris lets his head fall back on the pillow and paws at Zach’s shoulder until he leans in and kisses him, slow and affectionate and dirty and perfect.

“You were saying?” Zach asks when they break apart again.

Chris sighs. “You just haven’t been with anyone else as long as you’ve been with him. And you live with him now. I keep waiting for him to decide he wants you all to himself. I mean, you’ve been talking about kids—”

“Chris,” Zach interrupts, his expression troubled. He lets himself fall to one elbow and puts the other hand to Chris’s face, brushing a thumb over his cheekbone. “If Miles decides he’s not okay with my relationship with you, then that’ll be on him. Just like when Jon decided he couldn’t deal with it. What you and I have is non-negotiable.”

“But what if you change your mind?” Chris asks quietly. He didn’t mean to get so vulnerable all of a sudden. They really, really should have talked about this earlier.

“Really, babe? After seven years?” Zach raises an eyebrow at him. “Are you going to change your mind?”

“Never,” Chris says automatically. He doesn’t even have to think about that one. “Never. You’re…you…” He shakes his head, at a loss to describe what Zach means to him, how much he loves him, how much he never wants to be without him.

“Are you sure?” Zach asks, playful now. He grins and nips at Chris’s bottom lip. “Some stacked little blonde bombshell isn’t going to come along and convince you that loving more than one person is unhealthy?”

“Well if the Icelandic beauty queen couldn’t do it…”

Zach laughs and shifts his hips, pulling a groan out of Chris’s mouth. “Trust me, Miles is not going to ask me for monogamy. Just because he doesn’t want a relationship with you doesn’t mean he’s plotting a way to cut you out of the picture. He thinks you’re great.”

Chris sighs, relieved. It’s not like Zach is telling him anything he didn’t already know, but he just needed to be reminded. “I think he’s great too. I’m glad you found someone who accepts you, and this.”

“Mmm.” Zach gives another slow roll of his hips, like he is trying to remind Chris that he’s there, as if he could forget. “I love you, you know that?”

“I love you too,” Chris murmurs. “It’s just that you’re…you’re the constant in my life, Zach. That’s the only reason I get…I don’t know…stupid like this. I feel like I’d be lost without you.” He shrugs one shoulder. “You’re like…my lighthouse.”

Zach huffs out a quiet laugh. “It amazes me how poetic you can be with my dick in your ass.”

“Shut up,” Chris says with a laugh, swatting at Zach’s bicep.

“You’re my lighthouse too, baby,” Zach says with a twinkle in his eye.

“Oh my God, shut up,” Chris says again, the blood rushing to his face. “Just fuck me already.”

Zach seems happy to oblige.


	7. Blue Hawaii

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for daeontherun on tumblr for the following prompt: "Zach texts chris from hawaii asking to talk with him about Sundance, because he's getting pre-move cold feet. Chris reacts."
> 
> Warnings: emotional infidelity, angst, Zach/Miles

Miles is taking a nap in the sand next to Zach, his toes hanging off the edge of the beach towel, his hair fanning out over his sun-bronzed back. He is pretty as a picture, long and lean and impossibly perfect, and Zach is probably the envy of half the beach, but that doesn’t explain why every other time Zach looks at him, he still expects him to be someone else. He has been telling himself this feeling will go away eventually, but it just…isn’t. In fact, it has only gotten worse.

They have been together over a year. They are in love. They now own a loft together that costs more than Zach once could have imagined making in his lifetime. Why is this so difficult?

Zach picks up his phone.

_hey, you excited about heading to park city?_

His thumb hovers over the send button for way too long considering how innocuous a message it is, but in the end he’s weak. He sends it, and stares at the screen.

It wouldn’t be surprising if it took Chris hours to respond. He’s been known to put his phone down and walk away from it and forget about it for half a day. Trying to get ahold of him is like spinning a roulette wheel. Today though, Zach is lucky. Or unlucky, depending on how you look at it.

_Aren’t you in Hawaii right now, dude? Quit texting me._

Fucking Chris. Worry about your goddamn self, for Christ’s sake.

_miles is sleeping. entertain me. i’m excited to see z for z btw._

_So wake him up. You guys should go on a hike or something. I’ve heard the hiking is great there._

What the fuck? Zach stares at his phone incredulously.

_his family fucking lives here, chris. i don’t need travel tips._

This time it takes slightly longer for his phone to buzz.

_Why are you texting me, Zach? Read a book or something. Go stick your feet in the water. Enjoy your vacation._

Jesus. Leave it to Chris to somehow figure out from half an ocean away that Zach’s intentions are not as pure as they should be. His first instinct is to protest further, but he knows it wouldn’t get him anywhere. Chris would just stop responding eventually. So, he glances over a Miles one more time, then down at his phone, then, with shaking fingers, types another message.

_do you think i made a mistake moving in with him?_

It seems like it takes ten years for Chris to respond, but Zach doesn’t look away from his phone screen for one second, as if he’s afraid he’ll somehow miss it.

_Do you think you made a mistake moving in with him?_

Zach runs a hand over the short hair at the top of his head, tries not to think about how much he misses it when it was longer, then completely fails at not thinking about the long fingers that used to curl into it, in supply closets and in hotel rooms and in production trailers. In Tokyo and London. In Berlin.

_i love him_

_That’s not what I asked._

It feels like an accusation, and Zach’s stomach turns over.

_it’s different with him_

He doesn’t have to explain it any better than that. Chris will know.

 _It’s different with us_ , is Chris’s trite reply.

Zach has nothing to say to that. But then his phone buzzes again.

_You’re never sure about anything, Zach. You better fucking figure out how to be sure about something in your life, because I can’t keep doing this with you. You can’t have your cake and eat it too._

Zach wants to chuck his phone in the ocean. What was he thinking texting Chris in the first place? What made him think this could possibly have ended well? Next to him, Miles shifts a little, turns his face toward Zach, though his eyes are still closed and his expression is still slack with sleep. Zach should look at him and feel right and good and like everything is going to be okay, but all he feels is nausea, the hot burn of bile at the back of his throat.

_i’ll still see you at sundance?_

There is another long wait. Zach watches the waves beat unrelentingly at the shore, follows the path of a sea bird with his eyes.

_Of course. You’re still my Spock._

Zach smiles, then immediately clamps a hand over his mouth when he realizes a sob is on its way up and out. His throat feels tight and his face is burning and he would give his left arm to be able to hit the call button and hear Chris’s voice right now, but he can’t. He can’t, he can’t.

_you’re still my kirk_

Of course, now would be the time Miles stirs, then scoots his hand across their towels to brush his fingers against Zach’s thigh. It takes a heroic amount of self-control not to jump or sputter or flinch away. He turns his head away for a moment to compose himself, raising a hand to shield his eyes like he’s looking at something down the beach.

“Hey, everything okay?” Miles asks as he stretches, sliding his hand across Zach’s lap and gripping his swim trunks.

“Hey, sleepyhead,” Zach says thickly, turning back toward him with a pasted-on smile. “Sure, everything’s great.”

He reaches out and combs his fingers through Miles’ hair with one hand. His other hand nudges his phone underneath his thigh, just in case the screen lights up again. It doesn’t though.

"Everything’s perfect."


	8. To the Ends of the Earth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for the following anonymous prompt: "I will support him till the end of the earth." In my mind, this equals to "I will love you till the end of time." Imagine after Zach watched zfz and pushed Chris to the backstage or bathroom and said all the sweet things and that leads to where is up to you. "I can't help it, babe. You looked so hot in it."
> 
> Basically, it's unrepentant fluff.

Zach locks the door behind them and pushes Chris up against it.

“I’m so proud of you,” he says, first with words and then with kisses, and Chris opens up to him automatically, forgetting right away that they are in public restroom with a shit-ton of media and a good number of their colleagues somewhere on the other side of the door.

“It’s just a movie, Zach,” Chris says when Zach’s mouth moves to his neck. “I’ve done a lot of ‘em. I’ll be doing a lot more.”

Zach pulls back and gives him a serious look. “It’s not just a movie. It’s an accomplishment. Every single one of them is an accomplishment, but this one especially. I know you never wanted to be pigeonholed as a pretty boy leading man type, and between this and Stretch and—”

Chris flaps a hand at him, cutting him off before any more blood can rush into his face. In this business, it’s easy to get used to overly effusive praise, but it always means more coming from Zach. Zach isn’t deterred by Chris’s embarrassment though.

“Seriously, that was such a nuanced performance, Chris.” The serious tone of his voice is somewhat diminished by the fact that he leans in again and nuzzles in behind Chris’s ear, his breath ghosting over the sensitive skin of his neck. “You sat in that moral gray area so well. It was a privilege to watch.”

“Okay, okay, I get it,” Chris gasps, sliding his fingers through the fuzz at the back of Zach’s head. It’s so weird to not feel the thick, silky hair he’s used to there, but it’s probably best that there’s nothing there to mess up right now. They have to leave this bathroom again at some point, and it’ll be a little suspicious if Zach ends up looking debauched.

At the rate they’re going, Chris is going to be the one who ends up looking debauched though. Zach’s fingers are curled into his shirt, which is already stretched enough and now is going to be wrinkled to boot. He is mouthing at Chris’s neck like he is contemplating biting and only just barely managing to restrain himself.

“Do you get it though?” he hums against Chris’s skin. “I’m not sure you do.”

“I get that you love me.”

Zach lifts his head again, and his eyes are so impossibly warm and dark and full of affection that Chris almost gasps. “I do love you. But I also respect you. Admire you. Believe in you. You deserve every bit of praise you get, Chris. From me or anyone else.”

Chris doesn’t know what to say anymore. He is out of ways to deflect, pinned under Zach’s earnest gaze, and all he can do is blush harder and try not to let his throat close up. It would be embarrassing as hell if he burst into tears right now. Current softness aside, Zach would never let him hear the end of it.

“Thanks,” he says, a little hoarsely. “Your support means a lot. Seriously.”

Zach smiles. “Good.”

“And I hope you know that I feel the same way about you,” Chris adds. He cups the back of Zach’s neck in his hand and holds his gaze. “I’m so lucky to have you. Lucky to even know you.”

Zach makes a desperate sound in the back of his throat and presses in even closer and kisses him hard, threading his fingers into his hair and probably messing it up irreparably, but Chris couldn’t possibly give less of a shit right now. He holds on tight and kisses Zach back, pouring out every bit of love he has. Fuck the after party. Fuck the press. They can just stay in here all night, just like this.

“You were hot too, by the way,” Zach says when he breaks the kiss to mouth along Chris’s jaw. “Your fucking arms. I’m going to have to make you do more manual labor.”

Chris laughs and slides his hands over Zach’s back. “I will happily let you ogle me whenever you want.”

“Good. I’m going to hold you to that.” Zach slides his teeth along Chris’s collarbone, and Chris can’t help but cant his hips forward, seeking contact, even though he knows this is a bad idea.

“We should probably be getting back,” he says, though he doesn’t sound very convincing even to his own ears.

“Not yet,” Zach says. He reaches down and palms Chris through his pants, then reaches for his fly.

Okay, Chris thinks. Maybe not yet.


	9. Don't Let Go

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for Lovespie, who wanted the following: "I'd love some pinto h/c. Anything that brings out the worried, tender side of Zach would be great.
> 
> Features sick!Chris and mother-hen!Zach

Chris knows it must be serious, because Zach isn’t mocking him.

Zach’s a nice guy—of course he is—but he doesn’t usually baby anyone. Bang your leg on something? Walk it off. Get a scrape? Rub some dirt in it. Head cold? Load up on meds and buck up. He doesn’t tolerate much weakness in himself, so he doesn’t tolerate it well in others either. Chris actually likes that about him—it’s comforting, in a strange way, to have Zach rib him in situations where someone else might make sympathetic sounds and rub his shoulder. Zach’s taunting has helped him power through many a long day of filming or press, even when he was sick or exhausted or hungover.

This time, Zach isn’t taunting him though. He is perched on the edge of the couch in Chris’s trailer, and he has a cool hand on Chris’s forehead, and his eyebrows are pinched together with worry.

“You’re burning up, Chris.”

Chris knew when he woke up this morning that something was off, but it’s not like you can just call in sick to a movie shoot. There are too many people counting on him. He’s the captain of the goddamn Enterprise. But they only managed to film for an hour before he had to request a break, because he felt like he was about to keel right over. He barely made it back to his trailer before collapsing on the couch, sweaty and shaking.

Zach had wandered in sometime later to check on him, and Chris hopes he never, ever leaves again, because his hand feels like heaven right now, especially when it slides down the side of his face, briefly soothing his overheated skin.

“I think I’m sick,” Chris says unhelpfully.

“I think you probably are,” Zach says with a laugh. There is concern in his eyes though. “We have to get you home. There’s no way you can work like this.”

“No,” Chris croaks. “Everyone’ll be mad.”

“No they won’t.” Zach’s voice sounds overwhelmingly tender, in a way Chris almost never hears it. He nuzzles into the cool touch of Zach’s fingers and wishes they could be everywhere at once. Zach seems to hear his thoughts and strokes them down Chris’s neck, then back up the side of his face, up to his forehead. “You don’t move. I’ll be right back.”

Chris makes a sound of protest, not wanting Zach to leave, but Zach is already up and halfway out the door. He probably couldn’t move to follow him if he wanted to right now though. His limbs feel heavy, as do his eyelids, and sleep sounds great right about now. Maybe it’ll provide some kind of escape from the boiling heat inside his head.

It could be minutes or hours later that Zach shakes him awake—but it was probably closer to hours, because Zach is completely de-Spocked now, his eyebrows hidden behind thick glasses and his ears returned to their normal roundness. He is holding Chris’s clothes. “Come on, Captain. We’ve gotta get you back into civilian clothes.”

Chris isn’t much help. Zach has to pull him into a sitting position and strip off his shirt, and he just barely manages to lift his arms long enough to make it easy. Once the command gold has been swapped for his t-shirt, Zach works a little magic in managing to get him out of his too-tight Starfleet-issue pants and wrestling him into his jeans.

“What about filming?” Chris asks in a brief fit of lucidity. Somewhere in the back of his mind he’s aware that he might feel embarrassed about all this later, but right now it’s buried beneath a thick layer of fog that only seems to be getting thicker.

“They’re going to focus on some of the scenes with Karl and Alice today. Don’t worry about it.” His hands are back on Chris’s face now, framing it and forcing Chris to look at him. “I’m going to take care of you, okay?”

“Okay,” Chris says, then licks his dry lips.

Zach helps him get to his feet and keeps an arm around his waist so he can lean heavily against him on the way to the door. The parking lot seems incredibly far away, but if Chris trusts anyone to get him there, it’s Zach. He would trust Zach with anything, but this caring, mother hen version of him seems almost omnipotent to Chris’s fever-addled brain. He half expects Zach to just fly them to his car, or bend space and time to get them home instantly.

Okay, that’s definitely the fever talking.

“Can you make it all the way to the car, babe?”

If Zach calls him babe again, he could do jumping jacks, probably. Well, maybe one jumping jack. He closes his eyes and lets his head loll onto Zach’s shoulder, trusting Zach to guide him. “Yeah, I can, if you don’t let go.”

“I won’t let go,” Zach says into his ear. He grips him even tighter.


	10. How We Fit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for the following anonymous tumblr prompt: "While hanging out during Sundance, there's a lot of angst/sexual tension between Chris & Zach because Zach isn't single now and maybe they had something in the past or are used to hooking up when they see each other."
> 
> Warnings: angst, sad ending, pining.

Chris should have known when he slid out back for a cigarette that Zach would find a reason to follow him, but he had been hoping it wouldn’t happen this way. Maybe tomorrow, after a little more press and a little more time to readjust to Zach’s presence, but not tonight. Not when he is still trying to recover from being flayed alive by that initial burst of longing.

“You know that’s probably why your beard is so gray, right?” Zach says, glancing pointedly at the cigarette poised between Chris’s thumb and forefinger. Self-righteous concern is not a good look for him.

“Hypocrite,” Chris says with a scowl, then takes a long drag out of spite.

Zach just shrugs off Chris’s irritation like it’s nothing and slides right up next to him, leaning back against the wall close enough that their shoulders touch. “I quit a while ago.”

“I remember,” Chris says around a cloud of smoke, which he may or may not be blowing in Zach’s direction on purpose. “I never heard the end of it. You were a huge dick for weeks.”

“At least I had a good excuse.”

There is something hard in Zach’s eyes, and Chris has to look away before it makes him want to do something to soften him up. None of his normal tricks would work now. Most of them are forbidden.

(Some small, dark part of him is still tempted to try, but fuck that. Christopher Pine is no homewrecker.)

“Is this how it’s going to be now, Chris?” Zach is so, so close. Chris almost thinks he can feel his breath on the side of his face, and he’s too chicken to turn his head and look at him. Instead, he leans into the warm weight of Zach’s body against his and shakes his head, eyes on the ground.

“No. It won’t be like this.” _I’ll be fine_ , he wants to say, except that he isn’t sure how true that is. He isn’t sure if he’ll be fine, but he knows that this is temporary, because no way is he going to let his own inability to get over this shit get in between him and Zach. It’s not Zach’s fault he wanted something more permanent than a string of press-tour hookups. It’s not Zach’s fault that Chris choked when the time came to make it more than that.

“Hey.” Zach gives Chris a little nudge, and finally Chris is forced to turn his head and look at him again. Out here in the dark, Zach’s eyes are pitch black, not the warm brown that Chris sometimes sees when he closes his eyes. That helps. “I really missed you, you know?”

Chris can’t help but smile. Zach lets so few people see him this soft and vulnerable. It’s comforting to know he is still one of those people. “I missed you too. I always miss you.”

Zach nods his understanding and then lets his head fall onto Chris’s shoulder, curling his shoulders inward like he’s trying to guard against the cold—or maybe guard against something else. Chris takes the last drag from his cigarette and then drops it to the pavement and stubs it out with the toe of his boot. Then, he pushes an arm in between the wall and Zach’s shoulders and tugs him closer.

It’s funny how they fit together the same even though everything is different.


	11. Stuck Without

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I got a prompt from thatmysticbafflingwonder (babykid528) for one of the guys being stuck without something they can't live without. Naturally, I chose Zach and his phone. This is set in Berlin, after the STXIII press tour.

“God, I can’t believe I forgot my phone,” Zach says for what feels like the five hundredth time in the two short days they’ve been in Berlin. He’s staring out the window at the sun setting over the skyline—the now-familiar silhouettes of the Fernsehturm and the Berlin Cathedral—a view that just seems to get more and more beautiful the more times Chris sees it. It would figure that Zach is thinking about his goddamn phone now.

“Man, if you want a picture of Berlin, there are a shitton of professional photographs you could buy that would do it way more justice than your fucking Instagram filters.” What Chris really wants right now is a picture of Zach, standing by the window, dark against the backdrop of soft orangey purple light. But if he picks up his camera now, Zach will turn around, and the spell will be broken. So Chris just stands there and watches—far enough away that he can’t reach out and touch, but close enough that the urge to cross the rest of the distance is almost unbearable.

“It’s not the same,” Zach says forlornly, crossing his arms over his chest. “I want to remember this. This is the last time, you know?”

Finally, Zach casts a look over his shoulder at Chris, and Chris has to melt a little at the look in his eyes. It’s like longing, like Zach’s missing something he hasn’t even left behind yet. That look sinks a grappling hook into Chris’s chest and tugs him forward completely against his will, until he has closed the distance between them. He reaches up and puts a hand on Zach’s shoulder.

“It’s not the last time you’ll be here,” Chris says, though he knows that’s not what Zach means. “You’re a movie star and this is your favorite city. You can afford to visit again. And then Instagram to your heart’s content.”

Zach rolls his shoulder like he’s trying to shrug Chris off, but when Chris refuses to move his hand, he gives up, turns his face back toward the window. “It won’t be the same.”

Of course it won’t be the same. Nothing is the same when they aren’t together. Food tastes different. Places feel different. Chris has lived in LA his whole life, but he could swear something about it changed the day Zach moved away. So of course experiencing Berlin together is nothing like experiencing it separately, but Chris doesn’t think that’s what Zach means. He just means that next time he won’t be here for Trek, with a bunch of his friends. It’ll be different, but not necessarily worse.

There’s another tug at his chest, and it aches, it aches, but he can’t get any closer to Zach without falling apart.

“The hotel in London overnighted your phone. It’ll probably get here in time for you to snap a few pics on our way to the airport tomorrow night.” Chris shifts his weight and drops his hand back to his side. “Just get the thing surgically implanted in your hand already, and then you won’t forget it again.”

With Zach looking away, Chris can’t see the eye roll, but he knows it happened just the same. But a moment later, Zach looks back at him, and he’s smiling just a little, his lower lip caught in his teeth. He studies Chris’s face for a moment, then gives a guilty little shrug. “Sorry. I’m being a totally downer. I just…I want to burn this into my brain, you know?”

Chris’s breath catches, but he tries to hide it with a jerky nod. “I know.”

The tone of his voice is all wrong—too breathy and too thick with emotion—and he knows Zach is going to notice just a half a second before he sees his expression flicker. Chris expects confusion. Maybe irritation. What he sees, though, is hope.

“Chris?” Zach says. Only that. Just his name, in the form of a question. And then Chris is swaying forward, resting his palm on Zach’s chest and pressing their lips together, soft and sweet, like it’s something he does every day.

Zach has his eyes closed when Chris pulls away, and he keeps them closed for a long moment after that too. Now, Chris doesn’t need a camera. This is going to stay with him forever—Zach’s face, quiet and content, all his edges softened by the golden hour.

He waits until Zach’s eyes open again to speak. “Think you’ll remember it now?”

Zach just smiles and reaches for him.


	12. Five More Minutes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just a bit of fluff written in response to a random anonymous message I got about Chris and Zach cuddling. Dedicated to Stellarbisexual. <3

"No."

Arms tighten around Zach’s middle, dragging him backward and deeper into the cocoon of blankets. Chris’s nose nudges up under his ear, and his breath spreads warm against his neck, and Zach can’t help but sigh with contentment.

"I should get up and walk the dogs," he mumbles, but there is no real conviction behind it.

"No," Chris repeats. His voice is rough with sleep, the rasp in it more pronounced than usual. Toes slide along Zach’s calf just before Chris tangles their legs together. 

"If Skunk pees on the rug, are you gonna clean it up?" Zach is already pressing back against him though, and Chris responds by pressing forward with his hips until there is officially not an inch of space between their bodies. Zach can feel him half hard against the small of his back.

"Yeah," Chris answers. It’s pretty clear he has no idea what he’s agreeing to. He sounds like he is still mostly asleep. "Just five more minutes."

"You’re terrible," Zach says. It sounds a lot less like an insult and a lot more like ‘I love you’.

Chris snuffles sleepily and drags his nose across Zach’s skin, then presses his mouth against the base of his neck. “No, you.”

"Do you even have any idea what you’re saying?"

"I’m saying stay."

Zach shuts his eyes and just breathes for a moment, savoring the moment. Then, he pulls Chris’s arm tighter around him, and officially gives in, just like he knew he was going to from the moment Chris told him no. Chris has him wrapped around his finger, and he probably knows it. Thank God he doesn’t take advantage of it more often. 

Not that Zach feels much like complaining this time.

"Okay. Five more minutes."

He can feel Chris’s lips curl into a smile against his skin.


	13. Waiting for Someday

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for my darling doctorbones. A little emotional H/C. Chris doesn't get a part he really wanted, and Zach comforts him.

The door slams hard—hard enough to rattle the picture frames on the walls—and Zach carefully closes his laptop and sets it on the coffee table. He looks up just as Chris blows into the room like a hurricane, throwing his bag at the wall and then wrenching off his cardigan and flinging it down on the chair. He barely glances at Zach before toeing off his shoes and heading into the bedroom, where there is a distinct thunk, thunk of rubber soles hitting the floor.

Zach just sits still, clutching his knees. He was toying with the idea of standing up when he heard Chris come in, but now he figures it’s better to just be still, let Chris slam and crash and wallop his anger out before he asks him what’s wrong. Not that he needs to ask. They have been waiting for weeks to see if Chris landed this role, and he certainly isn’t banging around the apartment because it’s good news.

After several minutes and a few more loud noises from the bedroom—the slam of a drawer, a string of curses, the bathroom door ricocheting off the frame—Chris reappears in the doorway. His hair is a mess, like he was clutching it angrily, and he has changed into sweatpants. His expression is still dour. He won’t look at Zach still, but he isn’t moving either, twisting and stretching the hem of his shirt between his fingers and shifting his weight restlessly.

“Sweetheart,” Zach says helplessly. He spreads his hands, and the movement finally gets Chris to look at him. It isn’t until he sees the tears welling up in Chris’s eyes that Zach finally jumps to his feet.

He crosses the room in a handful of strides and pulls Chris into his arms, one arm wrapped tight around his waist and the other resting on the back of his head, tugging him in close. Chris’s breath is hot and humid against his neck, and Zach can tell that he is fighting a losing battle against those tears. It makes him feel dangerous. It makes him want to tear the world apart to find the person that hurt him. 

“I didn’t get it,” Chris says. His voice is quiet and thick. He isn’t telling Zach anything he hadn’t already figured out for himself.

“It’s okay,” Zach replies—because what the fuck else can he say? Nothing. It’s cruel how few words there are for a situation like this.

“It’s not okay.” Chris pushes his wet cheek against the base of Zach’s neck. “It’s not. They don’t fucking think I can do this, Zach. They think I’m just some goddamn action hero. They—”

“Fuck them,” Zach snarls. He grabs Chris by the shoulders and pushes him backward so he can look him in the eye. “Seriously, since when do they get to decide what you can do?”

“Uh, since they’re the ones casting the play?” Chris snuffles and looks away, wiping at his eyes. Zach reaches out to grasp his chin though, forcing him to meet his eyes again.

“They’re casting this play. Not all plays.” He slides his hand up to cup Chris’s cheek, swiping a thumb along his damp cheekbone. “You’re an amazing actor, Chris. You’re going to make it someday. This just wasn’t the right thing.”

“That’s fucking bullshit,” Chris scoffs. His eyes are wide and hopeful though, like he’s begging Zach to tell him he’s wrong. “That’s what you say to a failure to make them feel less like a failure.”

“No.” Zach pauses and grinds his teeth. Seriously, fuck Broadway. Fuck the snobs of the world. Fuck anyone who makes Chris feel like anything less than the masterpiece he is, the beautiful ray of sunshine who deserves the adoration of everyone in the world. “No, it’s what you say to someone who’s had a setback to let them know it’s not the end of the world. You’re going to show them someday, Chris. You will.”

Chris’s tongue slides over his bottom lip, and then he looks away again. “I’m tired of waiting for someday.”

“I know.”

Zach pulls him in again, and Chris sags against him, curling his fingers tight in the back of his shirt. There are really no more words, so Zach leans against the doorjamb and just lets Chris rest against him for as long as he needs. He runs his hands up and down Chris’s back and sifts his fingers through his hair and kisses his temple. He murmurs meaningless platitudes that Chris might not even be able to hear until the tension starts to drain out of his body.

Finally, Zach runs his palms up Chris’s arms and gives his shoulders a squeeze. “What do you say to pizza and cuddling up in front of a bad movie?”

Chris huffs a laugh into the the crook of Zach’s neck and then pulls back to look at him. “That sounds like heaven.”

“I thought it might.” Zach leans in for a tender, lingering kiss. When he pulls away, he cups Chris’s face in his hands and studies him for a moment, then smiles. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” Chris says, sincerely and without hesitation. Everytime he says it, it sounds like the first time to Zach’s ears. He still hasn’t stopped feeling lucky.

Just as he’s about to head for the phone to order the pizza, Chris grabs his hand to stop him. Zach turns back with eyebrows raised.

“I’m not going to stop trying,” Chris says quietly.

“I know you won’t.” Zach can’t imagine being prouder.


	14. Picture This

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A journalist!Zach/photographer!Chris AU, written for SilentBridge.

The stack of photographs hits Zach’s desk and fans out, glossy paper slip-sliding around until his work is covered in shots of dried-up river beds and dying grass and beached boats. On instinct, he reaches out and slides them apart even more, focusing in on one in the center of the stack that shows a close-up of the sun-baked, barnacle-crusted hull of an old sailboat. It’s a brilliant shot. It makes Zach long for a long, cool drink of water just to look at it.

Looking up and meeting Chris Pine’s ocean-blue eyes doesn’t help matters.

“Can I help you?” Zach says, quirking an eyebrow. He knows very well why Chris is here, but he’s not going to make it easy for him.

“You said you wanted the shots.” One long finger taps the corner of the photograph closest to him, a parched creek bed, the earth cracked and dusty. “Here are the shots.”

Zach looks back down and rifles through them, moving them around on his desk like he needs a closer look. He doesn’t need a closer look. He could tell from a glance that they are good— _too_ good maybe, too scary. It’s not surprising that Chris would go the extra mile and take shots so perfect they might not even need an article to go with them. Zach doesn’t want to make any cliched statements about what a picture is worth, but, well. The evidence is right there.

“I was like four beers deep at that point, Pine,” Zach says carefully. Four beers deep, but he still can remember it vividly. He spilled his guts all over the bartop, admitting to Chris that he’s tired of writing fluff pieces for the lifestyle section, that he can’t stand to pen another vapid word when the beaches are full of sea lion carcasses and there will be no more drinking water in the state of California in a year. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The world is fucked. That’s exactly what he said to Chris, in fact—the world is fucked. But he was tipsy and morose, and he didn’t expect Chris to take it to heart. He should have known better.

“That’s right,” Chris says, crossing his arms over his chest. “You were four beers deep and probably the most honest you’ve ever been. And you said ‘Chris, if you get me the shots, I’ll write the article.’ And here are the shots, Quinto, so pick up your fucking pen.”

Zach smirks at that, refusing to recognize it for the defense mechanism that it is. “It’s the twenty-first century, you Luddite. No one writes with a pen anymore.”

“Pen, laptop, whatever,” Chris says with a dismissive wave of his hand. “I don’t care if you break out a dictaphone. Just do it.”

“Who died and made you editor?” Zach feels equal parts annoyed and petulant now. He doesn’t need Chris lecturing him on what he should and shouldn’t do with his life. The fact that he is so damn right all the time just makes him that much more annoying. Someone that pretty shouldn’t also be intelligent and talented and deeply compassionate and…no. Zach doesn’t need to go down that path right now.

“Zach.” Chris’s gaze gets all earnest and his mouth screws up into an adorable little pout that makes Zach want to groan aloud. “Come on. I know you don’t want to be writing about celebrity weddings for the rest of your life. Do this with me. Please.”

Do this _with me_. Zach wonders if he chose those words on purpose, if he notices the way Zach looks at him and is using it to his advantage now. But Chris’s eyes are wide and innocent, his expressions as hopeful as if he’s asking Zach a personal favor. Like he couldn’t go to any other reporter in the city and get these pictures bought in an instant. Zach is such a fucking gonner. He knows it. He might as well stop resisting.

“Damnit, Pine,” Zach says. He picks up the middle picture, the one of the boat hull, the one he already knows is his favorite. He holds it close to his face like it’ll hide him. “Fine. Fine. I’ll write it. But if it blows up in my face, I’m taking it out of your hide.”

Chris’s hand comes down on his shoulder, and Zach looks up just in time to see him beam. No one else in the world smiles like that, Zach’s sure of it. That smile is one of a kind. It kind of makes it worth giving in to him, just for that. “Fantastic,” he says, giving Zach’s shoulder a squeeze. “Just remember me when you get your Pulitzer.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Zach laughs, swatting Chris’s thigh. “Get out of here before I change my mind.”

“You got it, boss,” Chris snarks. He gets about two steps away before he stops and turns back toward Zach. hesitating, rocking back on his heels. “If you, uh, want to grab another beer sometime and talk about it…?”

“You free tonight?” Zach asks too quickly. Why bother being coy about it? He might as well go all in.

Chris shines that smile on him again, all one billion watts of it. “Yeah. Tonight’s great.”

Zach can’t help but smile back.


	15. Father's Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A little bit of hurt comfort, written for Lovespie. Warning for mentions of Leonard Nimoy's death.

Chris finds Zach in the kitchen of the apartment they’ve been sharing while Trek is filming. It’s their day off, and he meant to ask Zach if he wanted to go into the city and get breakfast somewhere, but something isn’t right. Zach is just standing there, gripping the edge of the island. He’s shaking—shivering hard, like he’s freezing, even though he just came back from a run and it has to be almost 70 degrees outside. Even though sweat is rolling down his forehead and hitting the countertop, his shirt soaked through with it, his hair shiny with it. A broken gasp comes out of his mouth, and Chris is across the room in an instant, wrapping his fingers around Zach’s bicep and squeezing.

“Zach, do I need to—”

He was going to ask if he needed to call an ambulance, but when Zach looks up, it’s clear he isn’t sick or hurt. His eyes are rimmed in red, and those are tears—not sweat—rolling down his cheeks. He’s shaking with the force of holding back sobs. One makes it out of his mouth anyway, just as he meets Chris’s eyes, and then he is lunging forward, wrapping his arms around Chris, burying his face in his neck.

“Jesus,” Chris says, equal parts worried and overwhelmed. He holds Zach tight, oblivious to the sweat soaking into his own clothes. His hand rubs soothing circles in the center of his back. “Zach, what happened?”

“It’s…today,” Zach mumbles into his skin, his voice rough and wet. At first, that means nothing to Chris. What’s today? Sunday? June 21st? What’s the significance?

And then it hits him. The reason he bailed on his run with Zach this morning. The reason he just got off the phone with his dad. It’s Father’s Day. It’s Father’s Day, and Zach is fatherless—his father-by-blood many years gone, his father-by-choice gone for only a handful of months. _Fuck._ Chris’s throat closes up, and he tightens his grip on Zach, one hand coming up to brush across his hair.

“God, Zach, I’m so sorry. I didn’t even think. I didn’t—”

“Chris,” Zach gasps. That’s all. Just one word—his name—like a prayer. Chris, help. Chris, make it better. But he can’t. He can’t make it better. Nothing can make this better.

“What do you need?” he asks quietly. It seems unfair to ask Zach, but he doesn’t want to screw up, doesn’t want to make it worse. He already has been an idiot for forgetting how hard today would probably be on Zach. He still remembers vividly the day he pulled open his front door and saw Zach standing there, jet-lagged and grief-striken, carrying only a suit bag with one black suit. Can I crash with you? he asked, like it wasn’t a foregone conclusion. _I don’t want to be alone._ Chris shouldn’t have let him be alone this morning either.

“Just…just give me a minute,” Zach says. He pushes his face deeper into Chris’s neck, hot tears soaking into his skin and the collar of his shirt. Chris combs his fingers through Zach’s damp hair and then strokes them down the back of his neck. He turns his head and places a kisses his temple.

“Take all the time you need,” he murmurs, then presses his lips to Zach’s skin again, then to his hair. He scratches his nails across Zach’s shoulderblades. A litany of touches to remind him that he’s not alone. Zach lets out a shuddery sigh, and then his breath hitches with another sob. His mouth is hot against Chris’s skin. He’s hot all over, in fact. It’s almost oppressive, but Chris wouldn’t let go for anything. 

He licks his lips and tastes salt and grief. He holds Zach tighter and grieves with him.


	16. Never Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for a prompt given to me by my BFF Jupiter: "Zach is FINALLY growing his hair back and Chris is very happy about it".

“Get in the shower,” Chris says, taking Zach by the scruff of the neck and marching him toward the bedroom. Zach lets out a series of bewildered noises and makes a show of trying to dig his heels in, but ultimately he lets himself be led along.

“Shower? Why shower?”

Chris stops in the doorway to the bedroom and shifts his grip to the sleeve of Zach’s shirt. With his other hand, he reaches up and and crunches his fingers into Zach’s hair, the part at the front that Zach has tried to gel into submission. His hair is at that awkward stage where it’s not quite long enough to do anything with and not quite short enough to not do anything with, so this is what he has been stuck with—some version of the 90s boy band look. It’s better than nothing. Or so Zach thought.

“This,” Chris says, twisting and bending the strands between his fingers until flakes of product rain down on Zach’s nose, “is not going to fly.”

“Hey, it’s my hair,” Zach says indignantly. He squares his shoulders and stares Chris down—and Chris lets him, an amused grin playing at his lips, for all of five seconds. Then, he lets go of Zach’s hair and pats his cheek.

“Get in the shower, Zach.”

In the end, he can’t even convince Chris to join him. He stands under the spray and lets the hot water wash all the crusty stiffness out of his hair, while Chris, who flew across the country to see him, who is seeing him for the first time in too many months, leans against the bathroom vanity with his arms crossed over his chest, watching Zach through the fogged-up door of the shower like he needs to supervise. Zach shampoos twice, just to make sure Chris is going to find no fault. Then he conditions, just to make Chris wait a little longer.

When he steps out of the shower, Chris is waiting with a towel. Zach hunches over so Chris can rub vigorously at his head, getting it as dry as possible. It feels good, and Zach lets his eyes drift closed and hums with pleasure, then makes a disappointed sound when Chris’s hands go still again.

Chris lets the towel drop to the floor and reaches up–then hesitates. “Why did you ever even cut it? What a fucking crime.”

“It was for the show, Chris, come on. You know that.” Zach wrinkles his nose at the whine in his own voice, but it just makes Chris’s eyes twinkle.

“Never again,” he says as his fingers finally push into Zach’s hair. It’s still a little bit damp, so it catches on Chris’s skin a little bit, pulling just enough to send sparks down to Zach’s toes. He groans and then bites down hard on his bottom lip. Chris lets out a little chuckle and leans in to brush a deceptively chaste kiss against Zach’s cheekbone. He combs his fingers through Zach’s hair again and again, hands moving all the way from his hairline to the back of his neck, like he needs to feel all of it. Every now and then he closes his fists around as much hair as he can and tugs it a little, and it’s not long before Zach can’t even hope to choke back the needy sounds he’s making.

“Never again,” Zach agrees. “I’m never cutting it again, I swear.”

Chris surges forward and kisses Zach hard, using his grip on his hair to pull him in closer. Zach winds his arms around Chris’s waist and just holds on, because that’s all he can do. While he’s kissing him, Chris never stops touching his hair, scratching blunt fingernails across his scalp, sifting the strands through his fingers like he can’t get enough. No one has ever touched him like Chris touches him—like they want to map every hair on his head, every bone in his body. It’s humbling, to be wanted this much.

Eventually, Chris’s hands wander down his chest, across his stomach, then around to the small of his back. Zach breaks the kiss on a gasp and rests their foreheads together.

“So,” he murmurs, letting his fingers drift lazily up and down Chris’s back, doing a little mapping of his own. “Are you happy to see me, or is it just the hair?”

Chris hums, pretending to think about it. “Mostly just the hair. But I guess the rest of you isn’t so bad either,” he says with mock solemnity. But a moment later, his smile gives him away.


	17. Like An Animal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zach gets all beefy for The Slap, and Chris likes it a little too much.

Chris has seen a lot of different incarnations of Zach over the years. Stripe-adorned hipster dork. Pristine and perfectly coiffed in a bespoke suit. Hot mess in yoga pants and dad sweaters. Missing half his eyebrows, his poor hair hacked into an unflattering bowl cut. He has seen him look like a million bucks, and he has seen him look like something the cat dragged in (and he supposes the same is probably true in reverse).

But this? This is a Zach he has never, ever seen.

“What the fuck, dude?” The words come out involuntarily as he steps into Zach’s apartment and into a hug. This has to be just about the ten-thousandth time he has hugged Zach, but his embrace feels different this time. More secure. Less escapable. “Have they got you working out around the clock or something? I mean, fuck.”

He gives Zach’s back a couple extra thumps to distract himself from how the muscles shift beneath his hands. Zach squeezes him a little tighter before he lets go, and Chris has to bite down on his bottom lip to keep from drawing a telling breath.

“Yeah, basically. It’s not fun.” Zach reaches down and picks up Chris’s bag. Chris can’t stop himself from studying the way his bicep strains against the sleeve of his t-shirt. It’s not that Zach has gotten _big_ , really. It would be way too strange (and probably off-putting) to see him bound in veiny muscles, looking like a roided-out gym rat. But no, he has filled out just the right amount, just enough to look…powerful.

“Remind me what this part is again?” Chris says, dragging his eyes away from Zach’s arms to study the neatly trimmed beard and the buzzcut he’s sporting. The whole effect is kind of severe. It’s a far cry from the floppy-haired Zach of the cotton t-shirts and basketball shorts that used to hang out on Chris’s couch, drinking microbrewed beer and talking abstract philosophical bullshit.

Zach rolls his eyes and starts walking away, toward the guest room, obviously expecting Chris to follow. “I told you. Greek car salesman. Bad temper. Smacks a kid.”

“Oh,” Chris says, nodding even though Zach has his back to him. He follows him into the second bedroom and watches as he sets Chris’s bag down next to the bed. When he turns back around, Zach fixes Chris with a quizzical look, eyebrows raised. He runs a hand over the fuzz at the top of his head.

“It’s not that bad, is it?” he asks. “I mean, it’s not like you never sported a questionable look for a project.”

“Dude, I sported some questionable looks in life,” Chris says with a grin and a shrug. If he had left it at that, maybe they could just have moved on, turned to the business of catching up. But he didn’t leave it there. He had to let out a self-conscious little chuckle, avert his eyes for a split second, and add, “And no. It’s not bad.”

The transformation of Zach’s face from normal and friendly to dark and intense is jarring. It makes Chris’s heart rate kick up and makes the blood rush to his face for reasons he doesn’t really want to examine at the moment. Apparently Zach thinks he knows what those reasons are though, because as he watches Chris, his mouth curls into a witting grin.

“You _like_ it,” Zach says.

“What? I–No. I’m just…I was just…” He can’t even manage to convince himself with his stammering, and Zach just looks more pleased than ever. When he starts to come closer, Chris swallows hard, feeling a little like he just unknowingly walked into a cage with a hungry lion. This is another flavor of Zach he hasn’t seen: predatory.

“You were just?” Zach asks. But Chris has completely lost track of what’s happening, because Zach has his backed up against the wall. He seems much more imposing than Chris remembers. Even though they are the same height, Chris feels dwarfed, like Zach could easily overpower him now if he wanted to. Or if Chris wanted him to. _Fuck_.

Drawing a shaky breath, Chris lifts his hand and lets it hover over Zach’s bicep. He’s itching to touch, itching to feel. “Can I?”

“No,” Zach says, his voice low and rough. Chris starts to drop his hand automatically, but Zach catches his wrist first, pins it to the wall by his head. Then, he does the same with the other wrist, his grip just shy of uncomfortable, just enough to inform Chris of the power behind it. The sound Chris makes is closer to a whimper than a groan.

Zach’s eyes go soft for a just a moment, and he leans in close enough that Chris can feel his breath on his face.

“I want you,” he says. “Do you want me?”

Chris nods and nods and nods until Zach cuts him off with a growl and a kiss. If Zach is the predator, he’s more than happy to be the prey. He offers himself up to be devoured.


	18. The Little Things

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rabidchild67 gave me the prompt "the little things" and this sapfest is what fell out.

Chris is not demonstrative. He doesn’t like public displays of affection (“Our relationship is not for the cameras, Zach”). He doesn’t believe in big romantic gestures like flowers and jewelry and planning fancy nights out on the town. He doesn’t say sappy things or whisper sweet nothings in Zach’s ear when they’re in bed together. While he touches Zach plenty when they are at home, he also has long stretches of time where he prefers to be alone.

At first, Zach doesn’t like it. He pouts for half a day when Chris shrugs off the hand on his waist when they are out in public together for the first time. He spends the first couple weeks sending Chris romantic texts when they aren’t together, but he stops when he realizes that he is only ever going to get smiley face emoticons in return. After a month and the dawning realization that he and Chris have very different views of what it means to be in a relationship, Zach finally breaks down and calls his mother.

“Should I talk to him?” he asks her, keeping his voice low like he’s scared Chris will overhear him, even though he’s not in the apartment at the moment. “I don’t want to seem needy.”

“Honey, the answer to the question ‘Should I talk to him?’ is almost always yes, in any relationship. You have to be able to communicate.”

She’s right, but it’s not what Zach wants to hear. He sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. “I just don’t think he means to be…hurtful. It’s just the way he is.”

“Well, you fell in love with him for a reason, didn’t you?” his mom says. “Maybe you should stop focusing on what he’s not doing, and start paying attention to what he _is _doing. If you go looking for the bad, you’re going to find it.”__

__So that’s what Zach does. He resolves to spend a week looking only for the good in Chris. And when he does, he starts to notice them—all the little things that he had been overlooking, all the ways that Chris proves he cares._ _

__Zach forgets he needs to charge his phone at night and wakes up to find it plugged in to the wall. He gets low on moisturizer, and Chris has replaced the bottle before he can even think to go to the store himself. Chris always asks him if he wants anything when he gets up to go to the kitchen or when he heads out to run errands. He buys him books (“I read this and thought you would like it”) and practical things (“You lost one of your gloves the other day, so I picked you up a new pair). He always kisses Zach before leaving a room. When he’s sitting in bed reading at night and Zach comes in from the other room, he looks up and smiles with his whole face. He never falls asleep without telling Zach he loves him._ _

__Once Zach is looking for it, Chris’s behavior paints a picture of a love so perfect it takes his breath away. This is something bigger than any grand romantic gesture. This is a person who has accepted Zach so fully, with all his quirks and flaws, that he has rearranged his life to accommodate him. Chris anticipates his needs. Chris takes care of him. No one has ever done that for him before. He is so used to existing side by side with the people he is in a relationship with, but Chris isn’t content with just sharing his space and his time. He is slowly turning them into one unit. Zach is moved by it. He’s awestruck._ _

__Knowing the way Chris expresses his affection, it’s surprising when, a couple weeks later, Chris walks in on Zach in the kitchen, shuffling his feet awkwardly and rubbing the back of his neck, and asks, “Hey, uh, how come you don’t really text me anymore? Like when I’m at work and stuff?”_ _

__“Hmm?” Zach frowns and clutches his coffee cup to his chest. “I thought you didn’t like that kind of thing? The sappiness?”_ _

__“I do,” Chris blurts, his cheeks turning pink. “I’m not good at it, but I…I like it when you do it. It lets me know you’re thinking about me.”_ _

__Zach cocks an eyebrow and hides his smile behind his cup, then nods slowly. “Alright. You just wait, Pine. I’m going to send you texts that put Shakespeare to shame.”_ _

__Chris chortles at that and moves in close to plant a sweet kiss on Zach’s lips. “I’m not asking for Shakespeare. It’s just…sometimes it’s the little things that really make a difference, you know?”_ _

__“Yeah,” Zach murmurs. He sets his cup down on the counter so he can put his arms around Chris and drag him closer. “Yeah, I know.”_ _


	19. Accidental Eavesdropping

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for Nostalgia-in-Starlight to fill the following prompt: "Grimy Corp: The morning after Pinto get together from the perspective of one of the other guys. Fluffy."

The one thing the place doesn’t have is an actual bed. There is a mish-mash of furniture scattered through the main room and bedroom area—most of it picked up from flea markets or passed down by their families—but a bed frame is nowhere in the mix. A twin mattress is shoved in one corner of the bedroom and a futon in the other. There are two lumpy couches in the main living space, and one of them pulls out into a sofa bed, but it’s not the kind of sofa bed that anyone could possibly catch the required number of winks on. It was never meant to be a place where anyone slept, but as men in their early twenties, they have all slept in worse places.

Patrick is used to waking up with a crick in his neck after hanging around too late to work on a project. He’s used to Reid’s snores and the fact that Babar usually wakes up at the asscrack of dawn. He’s used to early morning coffee runs with Chris and the fact that Zach usually needs a pillow thrown at his head to make sure he’s still alive. What he isn’t used to is waking up to conspiratorial murmurs and soft, affectionate laughter.

“Shhh, you’ll wake Patrick,” says a low voice—Zach’s voice. Patrick passed out on one of the couches last night—not the sleeper sofa, the other one. He can still feel the slight weight of the script he was reading on his chest. Zach, and whoever he is with, must have taken the pull-out. Patrick should get up and warn him, tell him to get whatever guy he brought back with him out of here before Reid shows up and lectures him about preserving the sacred sanctuary of art, but he doesn’t want to create an awkward situation. Maybe they’ll get up on their own soon enough.

“So what if I do?” says the other voice. It’s all Patrick can do not to leap to his feet in shock—and maybe a little bit of delight. That was _Chris_. Chris and Zach are in bed together. _Together_. “He’s going to find out eventually.”

There is a pause and a rustle of scratchy bedsheets, then a low noise that sounds like a bitten-off groan. Patrick has to resist the urge to clamp his hands over his ears to preserve his friends’ virtue.

“Maybe I wanted to have you all to myself for a little bit longer,” Zach murmurs. Chris’s gasp comes shortly thereafter. They better not look Patrick’s direction any time soon, because his flaming face will certainly give him away.

“Then you better stop doing that,” Chris hisses, “or you’ll have me waking up the whole damn apartment complex.”

“I don’t know about that. You were pretty good at keeping quiet last night.”

As appalled that Patrick is that he’s accidentally witnessing such an intimate moment, he can’t help but fight a smile. While he hadn’t really pictured Chris getting with Zach—hadn’t thought that much about it, actually—he can see how well it could work. When Babar roped Zach into the Corp, he hit it off with all the guys, but Chris most of all. They have tons of chemistry. They talk literature and philosophy for hours without getting the slightest bit bored. Patrick doesn’t get it, but he’s still glad for it. Chris doesn’t always click with people easily. He deserves a friend like Zach.

A boyfriend like Zach?

“Dude, seriously,” Chris is saying. “We should probably get up before the others do. I don’t want them to catch us like this.”

This pause sounds a little bit heavier than the last. Patrick holds his breath until Zach speaks again. “You’re not…I mean…do you want to hide it?”

“No, no. It’s not that. I wouldn’t hide anything from these guys.” Patrick can’t help the way his mouth twitches with the urge to smile. “I just don’t want them giving us shit for the rest of our lives, which is definitely what would happen if they caught us in bed together.”

Zach lets out a quiet laugh. “All right. Coffee?” 

Chris must have nodded, because a couple seconds later there is rustling and the creak of bed springs. Patrick listens to the sounds of the sofa bed being tucked away, of jeans being pulled on and zipped up, of footsteps traveling toward the door. He waits until the door clicks shut behind them to open his eyes.

With a grin on his face, he pulls out his phone and shoots off a quick text to Chris. _I’m happy for you, man_.

The reply comes just a few seconds later, and it makes Patrick laugh out loud.

_Cough or something next time, you sneaky bastard. And thanks._


	20. No Orange Paisley

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is polyamorous!Pinto, written for srarahcha. <3 It's Chris/Zach/Anna Kendrick, fluff and clothes shopping.

“What do you think about this one?” Anna asks, waving a forest-green button down in Zach’s direction. “He looks good in green, don’t you think? Someone should tell him he doesn’t always have to match his eyes to his shirt.”

“If I had eyes like that, I’d probably draw attention to them however I could too,” Zach muses. He walks over and rubs the sleeve of the shirt between his fingers, then checks the tag, then shakes his head. “It has to be one hundred percent cotton or he’ll never wear it. He’ll say it’s too itchy.”

Anna makes a frustrated sound and replaces the shirt on the rack. Zach feels her pain. He has been trying for years to get Chris to wear something other than stretched-out t-shirts, but unless his team of handlers is literally shoving him into a suit for an event, he’s a hopeless case. He’s obstinate.

“He’s obstinate,” Anna says, like she’s inside Zach’s head. “What’s the use of looking like a Ken doll if you never let anyone dress you up?”

She puts her hands on her hips and glowers at the clothes in front of her. The effect is more adorable than threatening though, and Zach chuckles and stoops to press a kiss into her hair. “Rule Number One: Don’t try to understand him. It’ll drive you crazy.”

“What’ll drive who crazy?” Speak of the Devil. Chris had been across the store inspecting the perfectly boring display of t-shirts, but he wanders back now, coming up behind Anna and wrapping his arms around her waist. His eyes are on Zach though, and he raises his eyebrows in question. “You’re not talking about me, are you?”

“We would never,” Zach says, putting a hand over his heart. “We would definitely not talk about how you’re impossible to shop for, or how you squander your good looks by hiding them under rags.”

“Not that I don’t worship at the shrine of sweatpants and t-shirts,” Anna adds. “Because I do. I just think every princess needs some pretty things too.”

She cranes her neck to look at him, and he rolls his eyes before leaning in to give her a quick peck on the lips. “Alright,” he concedes, looking back up at Zach. “You can each pick out one thing. And I promise I’ll even wear it.”

“Goody,” Zach deadpans. Anna does look gleeful though, and she wriggles her way out of Chris’s grasp to dart across the store toward the wine-colored trousers she had been pawing at when she first walked in the door. Chris scrunches up his nose for a moment, then takes a step toward Zach and wraps a hand around the back of his neck.

“You’re not going to put me in orange paisley or anything like that, are you?”

“Absolutely not,” Zach says with a laugh. “I see all it takes is a pretty girl batting her lashes at you to open your mind though. Good to know.”

He’s only teasing, and knows that Chris knows that. The conversations about boundaries and who’s comfortable with what are long in the past. There is enough of Chris to be loved by two people. And there is enough love inside Chris for more than two.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Chris says. “I bet you could bat your lashes at me and have a similar effect.”

Zach chortles, then leans in to hide his laugh in Chris’s neck for a moment. They are in public, and they probably should be more careful, given that mainstream America probably isn’t ready to wrap their heads around three people in one relationship. But the store is almost completely empty, and Zach hasn’t spotted any camera phones yet, so he indulges a moment longer. Until Anna comes back and tugs on Chris’s arm.

“Here!” she says, brandishing the burgundy pants. “Try these on!”

Chris pulls away from Zach with a sigh. Zach gives him his most unsympathetic face. “You brought this on yourself.”

“Alright, alright,” Chris grumbles. “Let’s get this over with.”

Anna smiles. Zach smiles. And then Chris smiles too.


	21. The Note-Book

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for respeckled, for the prompt: "one finds a tiny note left by the other in the sleeve of a cd/between pages of a book that was clearly left a whole ago. content is your choice." Chris finds out Zach is still waiting for him.

Chris’s first thought is that it’s too fucking late. The little slip of paper falls into his lap from between the pages of the book, and he opens it up, reads one line, and slams his hand down on his tray table in frustration, scaring the hell out of the middle-aged woman sitting next to him. By the time he gets to the end, he’s cursing under his breath, and the woman has managed to plaster herself against the window like she hopes she can melt into it. Chris doesn’t even have the presence of mind to look apologetic.

The book had been in a box of things Zach gave him the day he sold his LA house. Sickened at the thought of rifling through the junk deemed not important enough to make the trip to New York, Chris shoved the box into the back of his closet and forgot about it for a time. The only reason he picked this book up for the flight is that another friend recommended it to him, and he remembered spotting it at the top of the box. He picked it up and shoved it in his carry on right before he walked out the door.

_Dear Christopher,_ the note says, in Zach’s familiar handwriting. _A couple years ago I was convinced our lives were moving in different directions, and I made the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make. I thought by now I would have moved on, but in sorting through things in this mostly empty house, trying to decide what to bring with me, I am realizing that the only thing I really want with me in New York is the only thing I can’t have: You. I don’t know if you can forgive me for breaking your heart, and I don’t know if you would ever want to try again, but if you can, and you do, I will be waiting for you. I will wait forever if I have to. Yours always, Zachary._

It was nearly a year ago that Zach meant for him to have read this. Chris stares at the words in disbelief, runs his fingers over them like he expects them to dissolve. Zach must have been waiting for Chris to refer to it, expecting that it would come up in every conversation they have had since then. Zach must have assumed Chris was refusing to talk about it on purpose, because he didn’t want what Zach wanted.

Stupid, stupid Zach, with his theatrics and romantic notions. He can’t just pick up a phone and call. He can’t just look Chris in the eye and tell him that he fucked up and he wants to get back together. No, he has to hide a note in a book, a book symbolically hidden in a box of stuff he couldn’t take with him.

By the time Chris’s plane touches down, he feels like he’s going to bust out of his skin with anxiety. It takes all his self-control not to jump up and push people aside the moment the seatbelt sign turns off, or to break into a sprint the moment he emerges from the jetway. His heart is pounding as he finally makes it to baggage claim and starts looking around for Zach, who is supposed to be meeting him. When he finally does spot him, his heart stops altogether.

Zach is standing next to the carousel for Chris’s plane, and he lifts a hand in greeting the moment their eyes meet, his smile so bright Chris doesn’t know how everyone doesn’t stop what they’re doing to look. Chris feels the blood rush to his face as he winds his way through the mass of people toward him. His hands are shaking when he lifts the book up, letting Zach see the cover. The smile slides off Zach’s face.

“Chris,” he says, his voice shaky, terrified. He had started to lift his hands in preparation to pull Chris into a hug, but he lets them fall back to his sides now. “Did you just—”

Chris cuts him off. “Are you still waiting?”

“I…” Zach shakes his head, taking a half step back like he’s contemplating running away instead of having this conversation. “What?”

“You said you’d wait forever. In the note. Was that true? Are you still waiting?”

“I meant what I said,” he says, and Chris hears conviction in his voice. He sees hope and fear in his eyes.

Chris lets his bag fall to the ground. He drops the book too, and it hits the ground with a loud smack. There are so many people around, and probably cameras somewhere too, but Chris doesn’t care. It all fades into the background. He is standing with Zach on an entirely different plane of existence.

Zach’s eyes are wide when Chris’s hands frame his face. Chris thinks he can see tears in them too, just as he’s tugging him in. His own eyes are burning, and his chest feels full to the point of bursting.

He kisses Zach hard—without shame, without anger, without regret. He holds on tight, and this time he doesn’t plan to let go.


	22. It'll Get Easier

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for Lovespie, whose prompt was "massage". It's Chris and Zach in the back of a cab, during the filming of the first movie.

They are in the cab on the way back to the hotel, and Chris won’t stop rubbing his neck.

“Sore?” Zach asks, more because it’s making him uncomfortable to watch Chris rub his skin red and raw than because he is actually concerned. He doesn’t have the energy to be concerned. They are coming off a thirteen hour day, and Zach isn’t sure he’s even going to have the energy to walk from the car to the bed.

“Yeah,” Chris says. His voice is rough, like he’s already half asleep. “Been carrying too much tension in my shoulders I guess.”

He keeps squeezing and kneading, and Zach just watches his fingers work for a few more moments before he lets out a sigh. He beckons Chris with one hand. “Come here.”

“What?” Chris looks bewildered, out of it. It’s a little bit adorable.

“Come here. I can reach better.”

Maybe if he had more energy, Chris would protest. As it stands, he scoots closer to Zach and half-turns to present his back to him.

The muscles of Chris’s upper back are definitely knotted up. Zach digs his thumbs in hard, ignoring the way Chris hisses and grunts and twitches in discomfort. He rubs in circles along the edges of his shoulder blades, then slides his hands up the side of his neck, making him drop his head to his chest. After a while, the little sounds of pain turn into sighs of pleasure. Zach tries and mostly fails not to feel too smug about it.

“How much do I have to pay you to do this every night?” Chris asks, rolling his head to the side to give better access to Zach’s hand.

“Maybe if you just ask me real nicely.” Because Zach has a feeling it would end up happening one way or another. There is a scary inevitability settling in the pit of his stomach, a strange sense that he can see the future and he knows where this ends up. Between the city lights rolling by outside, just slightly illuminating Chris’s profile, and the driver carefully not looking into the rear view mirror and the way Chris’s shoulders feel far more familiar under his palms than they should, Zach feels like he has been plopped right into a scene in a movie he has seen too many times before.

“In that case, it’s in the bag. My sweet-talking skills know no match.”

“If by sweet-talking skills you mean puppy dog eyes, you’ve got that right.”

Chris twists a little bit more so he can shoot Zach a pleased grin, and Zach’s stomach turns over. He can’t resist stroking his fingers up the back of Chris’s neck one more time, scratching his nails up into his hair for just a moment before he lets his hands slide away. “Any better?”

“Much,” Chris sighs. “Thanks.”

This is the part where he should scoot away again, but he doesn’t. Instead, he leans heavily into Zach’s side, tips his head close like he’s contemplating letting it fall to Zach’s shoulder. Zach has to try hard not to shiver when he feels Chris’s breath on his neck. He turns his head to watch as Chris passes his hand over his face and then hides his yawn with it.

“Man, this is probably the best thing that’s ever happened to me, but it’s not fucking easy, that’s for sure.”

Zach knows he’s talking about Trek, but his heart still skips a beat. It’s the best thing that’s happened to Zach too, but the hardest part isn’t the long days or the hours in the makeup chair or finding the right balance of emotion and stoicism to lend to Spock. No, the hardest part is sitting next to him. But he’s also the easiest part too.

Zach bites down hard on his lip then turns his face away to look out the window.

“It’ll get easier,” he says. He really hopes he’s right.


	23. You Make Me Feel So Young

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The prompt was "swimming pool". Predictably, Chris and Zach go skinny dipping.

Chris knows he’s in trouble when Zach wakes him up in the middle of the night, leaning over him and pushing at his shoulder, his grin backlit by moonlight.

“Wake up,” he says, his voice a conspiratorial whisper even though they are alone in the house. “Come on.”

Caught between curiosity and the desire to go back to sleep, Chris hovers on the edge of wakefulness and tries to swat Zach’s hand away. “Stop it. I’m sleeping.”

“No you’re not. We’re going swimming.”

With that, Zach turns and walks out of the room, leaving Chris to groan and chuck a pillow belatedly toward the doorway he has already walked through. He has Chris pegged so well. He knows that there’s no way he can roll over and fall asleep again now that’s he’s wondering what the fuck Zach is thinking suggesting they go swimming in the middle of the night. Heaving a great sigh, he levers himself out of bed, wiping sleep from his eyes as he heads out through the living room, through the kitchen, and then out onto the back patio.

Zach is already in the water. He has turned the pool lights on, but not the patio lights, so the palm trees and bougainvillea bushes around the edge of the deck are bathed in a shimmery turquoise glow. The moon is waning, and Chris can’t make out any stars, but he doesn’t need to. Zach is the only thing he wants to look at. He is all long, hazy limbs in a pool of blue light—naked as the day he was born and smiling like the cat that got the canary. Chris has a feeling he’s the canary in this scenario.

He crosses his arms over his chest in preparation for pretending to dig his heels in.

“Skinny dipping, Zach? Really? First of all, we’re not sixteen. And second of all, it’s not exactly illicit if it’s in our own pool.”

Chuckling, Zach swims closer, until Chris can see the water dripping off his hair, onto his nose. Light plays over his wet shoulders, making them shimmer, making it hard for Chris to seem at all firm in the conviction that he doesn’t want to join him.

“Why don’t you join me, and I’ll show you just how illicit it can be?”

If any other person in the whole fucking world said that line, it would be cheesy, but it’s not. It’s Zach. Chris feels sixteen again, complete sweaty palms and a pounding heart and lungs that don’t quite want to pull at the air. He has known Zach for a decade and loved him for most of it, and he shouldn’t have this effect on him anymore. Everyone says that part fades away. Everyone must be wrong.

Chris strips without further protest and eases himself into the water right there, not even bothering to go for the stairs. Zach is right up in his space the moment his feet touch the bottom, pinning him against the side of the pool and moving in for a chlorine-flavored kiss. Chris leans back against the wall for leverage and wraps his legs around Zach’s waist to drag him even closer.

“What’s this about, anyway?” he asks, stroking his fingers through the hair on Zach’s chest.

“It’s about last week, when you admitted you’d never been skinny dipping,” Zach murmurs, his voice low and affectionately amused. “And it’s about the fact that I wanted to. Because no, we’re not sixteen, but you don’t have to be young to be dumb and in love.”

“Hey, who’re you calling dumb?” Chris says, even though he can’t stop smiling.

Zach just grins at him, then grabs him by the hips and backs them both away from the wall. Chris hums and wraps his arms around Zach’s neck and lets himself be dragged along like he’s weightless, enjoying the way the water and Zach’s bare skin feel against his. Zach is hard against the inside of his thigh, but Chris doesn’t feel the need to touch just yet. He is content to let Zach set the pace.

After all, they are dumb and in love. They have all the time in the world.


	24. Drunk Baking

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "Chris makes cupcakes drunk and Zach has no clue why, but it's super cute."

“I want cupcakes,” Chris says as they stumble through the door. Their arms are wrapped around each other’s waists and their legs are in danger of tangling together and sending them both sprawling on the hardwood, but Zach doesn’t want to let go.

“You’re drunk,” he declares with utmost seriousness. He’s drunk too, but no need to split hairs. “And we don’t have any cupcakes.”

“I’ll make some.”

“I don’t really think that’s a—” But before he can get the sentence out, Chris makes a sudden change of direction, heading for the kitchen, and ends up knocking both of them into the doorjamb. The next couple minutes are lost to fits of giggles.

Zach frankly has no idea how Chris can still stand upright, much less how he manages to find all the ingredients he needs. He can’t do more than lean against the counter and nurse a glass of lukewarm tap water while Chris bangs through cupboards and preheats the oven and paws through drawers for the right utensils.

The first egg ends up on the floor. Zach goes to clean it up, because he’s an excellent boyfriend thank you very much, but as soon as he gets down there and starts half-heartedly swiping a paper towel through the mess, the room starts to spin. He ends up plopping down and setting up camp, leaning his head against one of the cabinets and looking up at Chris, watching as he whisks sloppily and dumps half the flour out onto the counter.

“You’re making a huge mess,” Zach slurs unhelpfully. “You _are_ a huge mess, come to think of it.”

Chris ruffles Zach’s hair as he stumbles by on his way to the fridge to get the milk. “No cupcakes for you then, grumpy.”

What a liar he is. Zach already knows he’s going to end the night with frosting smeared on his face, whether it’s by choice or not.

Zach’s eyes slide shut around the time the cupcakes go in the oven. A long day and a lot of alcohol have finally caught up with him, and even the floor makes a nice substitute for a bed. He dozes off and on for a while, then jerks awake some indeterminate amount of time later, when Chris starts up a rousing rendition of Strike Up the Band, complete with a spatula drum solo.

“Hey, Judy Garland, could you keep it down?” Zach grumbles, rubbing at his eyes. “Some of us are trying to sleep.”

“It’s not time for sleeping. It’s time for eating.” Chris extends his hand and pulls Zach to his feet. They both go careening into the counter, and Zach grunts when his hip hits the granite hard enough that he’s probably going to have a bruise there tomorrow. Chris makes up for it by kissing him though. He tastes like chocolate buttercream, and Zach’s lips curl into a grin against his.

“You licked the bowl without me?” he asks as he pulls away, eyeing the spot of chocolate at the corner of Chris’s mouth.

“I saved you some.” Chris’s grin is lopsided and he looks like he’s having trouble focusing on Zach’s face. Zach would put the likelihood that these cupcakes are going to be inedible at somewhere around 99 percent and the likelihood that he’s going to hate himself in the morning at an even 100.

But as he leans in to lick the frosting from Chris’s mouth, he can’t bring himself to care.


	25. Love in Any Language

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "Old Married Pinto where Zach starts to lose his hearing so Chris teaches him sign language."

It’s bad genetics, according to Margo. She says Zach’s father’s side of the family has notoriously bad hearing, and that Zach’s dad himself was starting to have difficulties before he passed away. Poor Zach hasn’t even gone all the way gray before he starts asking Chris to speak up all the time, before his expression starts getting all squinty and confused during normal conversations.

He’s already as stubborn as they come, and he’s twice as stubborn about this. Chris suggests a hearing aide exactly one time, and it causes a fight that lasts three whole days—three days of glares in the hallway and the kind of spectacularly frigid cold shoulder that only Zachary Quinto can give. Chris just sulks and takes his licks, realizing he probably deserves it for not knowing better than to bring it up. He’ll leave it to the kids to bug him about it. Zach won’t snipe at them—not this badly anyway.

That doesn’t mean Chris doesn’t have other tricks up his sleeve, though. He starts raising his voice, just enough for Zach to hear him but not enough for him to get defensive. He makes sure the volume is all the way up on Zach’s cell phone when he’s in the shower in the morning. He leans in extra close to talk to him when they’re out on the town, passing it off with an arm around his shoulders and a kiss on his neck.

But there’s one more thing he wants to try. He just has to wait for the right moment—one that will take Zach off guard, keep him from raising his hackles. That moment finally comes one morning, when Zach is getting ready for a doctor’s appointment. Chris follows him around the house, reminding him to grab his jacket, handing him his thermos of tea. (Neither of them drinks coffee anymore. They both miss it.)

Finally, they pause at the door. Chris leans in to kiss Zach on the cheek and stroke the thatch of gray hair at his temple.

“I love you,” he says when he pulls away. He keeps his voice quiet on purpose. Zach frowns.

“What?”

Chris bites down on his bottom lip to hide his mischievous grin. Rather than repeat himself, he holds up his hand, third and fourth fingers bent toward his palm, pointer, pinky, and thumb extended. Zach frowns harder, searches Chris’s face.

“What’s that?”

“I love you,” Chris repeats, louder this time. He drops his hand and picks up Zach’s, manipulating the fingers into the same position his were a moment ago. Zach lets him do it, staring dumbfounded at their combined hands.

“I love you,” Chris says again, releasing Zach’s hand and making the sign with his own again.

Understanding dawns on Zach’s face. For a moment, his expression flickers, like he’s trying to decide whether to be angry or not. Then, slowly, his mouth curls into a grin—the kind of grin that lights up his whole face. He doesn’t say anything, just leans in for a kiss.

Just before Zach walks out the door, he turns back one last time, lifting his hand again and curling his fingers into the sign that Chris just showed him. Chris clutches his heart, blows him a kiss.

They don’t need words for this.


	26. Bang Bang

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An anon wanted me to write a ficlet inspired by the song Bang Bang by Nancy Sinatra. Warning for angst and an unhappy ending.

_Seasons came and changed the time_  
When I grew up, I called him mine  
He would always laugh and say  
“Remember when we used to play?” 

 

“Alright, what about this palette?” Chris tips the magazine toward Zach. “Marigold and royal blue. That’s good for a summer wedding, right?”  
Zach sighs and drags his eyes away from the television, and Chris tries not to let it get to him. He has been more excited than Zach has about all the wedding stuff from the very beginning, but it’s okay. Not everyone likes to plan. This kind of thing can be overwhelming. It’s not Zach’s fault.

“I don’t know, Chris,” Zach says. “Don’t you think that’s a little…on-the-nose? Do you want us to just wear our Starfleet uniforms instead of tuxedos too?”

“Oh, come on,” Chris snaps. Then, he takes a deep breath in through his nose, lets it out through his mouth, makes himself calm down. “I wasn’t even thinking about that. I just think the colors are nice.”

Zach at least has the decency to look a little contrite. He reaches out and strokes the hair at Chris’s temple, then runs his fingers over his lips. “I was thinking the other day about filming the first movie. About our fight scene, and bending you backward over that console.”

It’s a diversion. Chris knows it’s a diversion. He wants to call Zach on it, yell at him to pay attention, make him make this decision. But Zach leans in and brushes his lips across his cheekbone, then palms him through his jeans, where he’s already half hard and getting harder.

“We have months to figure this out, baby,” Zach murmurs. “You’re stressing yourself out. Let me help you unwind.”

The truth is that Zach is what’s stressing Chris out. The truth is that planning this wedding has made him happier than he has ever been, but it’s starting to worry him that Zach doesn’t seem happy at all.

But it’s okay. It’s fine. Zach is the one who proposed, so he must want this, right? He just isn’t the best at showing it. Chris isn’t going to let it get to him—isn’t going to become one of those weird, neurotic bridezilla types. Not that he’s the bride in this scenario.

“Alright,” Chris sighs, forcing a smile. “I could use a little distraction. This can wait until tomorrow.”

————

_Music played and people sang  
Just for me the church bells rang_

 

The door opens, and Chris whirls around to see Katie peeking her head in. Her expression is drawn, concerned. It’s her Big Sister look. Chris’s heart dips.

“Hey, sweetie,” she murmurs, stepping into the room and closing the door behind her. She smooths down the skirt of her royal blue dress and looks everywhere but at Chris’s face. “Umm. There’s a problem, Chris.”

He doesn’t wait for her to tell him. She is forced to step out of the way when he heads for the door and wrenches it open, then stalks across the hall and bursts into Zach’s dressing room. He knows what he is going to find there before he even steps through the doorway. His stomach has been rolling with fear all morning—not with pre-wedding jitters, but real, honest _fear_.

Getting married in this cute, old house was Zach’s idea. _Let’s keep it small,_ he said. _Let’s make it special_.

The sash is thrown up, and the white lace curtains are billowing in the breeze. The room smells like honeysuckle and fresh cut grass. Chris closes his eyes and imagines it as it should be—Zach standing in front of the mirror in the corner, turning around when Chris comes in the room and greeting him with that smile that’s only for him.

He opens his eyes. He turns back to Katie, who is hovering in the doorway with tears in her eyes.

“It’s okay,” he tells her. “Tell everyone they can go home now.”

“Are you—”

“It’s okay, Katie,” he says gently. What a wonder that he can make his voice sound like that right now, when all of his insides have turned to jagged, broken edges that cut him with each breath. “I’ll be fine.”

 

_Now he’s gone, I don’t know why_  
And ‘till this day, sometimes I cry  
He didn’t even say goodbye  
He didn’t take the time to lie 

_Bang bang, he shot me down_  
Bang bang, I hit the ground  
Bang bang, that awful sound  
Bang bang, my baby shot me down 


	27. Puzzled

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This was written for an anon, for a prompt "puzzled".

“Uhh, Zach?”

Zach snatches for the phone, but Chris is too fast, jerking away from him and skittering backward out of reach.

“Dude,” Zach gasps, prematurely mortified. “When someone hands you their phone to look at a picture, you do not swipe left or right. That’s common fucking courtesy!”

Chris ignores him. And his thumb is still moving, Zach’s phone held way too close to his wide eyes. There is an attractive little furrow between his brows, and his mouth is turned down at the corners. “Oh, Jesus. You still have…you still have—”

This time, when Zach grabs for the phone, he’s successful. But Chris doesn’t even drop his hand, just stands there staring at thin air like he’s trying to do intricate math problems in his head. Zach is afraid to even ask. He just chews on his lip and waits for whatever Chris is going to say next.

“You still have the pictures I sent you. From when we were…”

Zach doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t trust himself to. Chris is still wearing his long-division face, so he is probably going to get there himself eventually.

“You were so pissed when we…when I said we should stop…” Chris’s hand falls back to his side with a slap. “I would have thought you’d delete…”

“Yeah, well, I didn’t.” Zach juts his chin defiantly, even though he isn’t feeling that defiant. He feels like his insides have turned into hummingbirds.

He can actually see the moment Chris figures it out, the way the bewilderment melts off his face and his expression becomes terrifyingly unreadable. “You’re not over me.”

It isn’t a question, but Zach can’t help but answer, like Chris is reaching down his throat and dragging the words out himself.

“Of course I’m not,” he says.

“Of course you’re—” Chris eyes widen again. He shakes his head. “Of _course_ you’re not?”

Zach makes a vague gesture in Chris’s direction—an all-encompassing gesture that does absolutely nothing to explain how impossible it would be to even think about getting over him. When Chris broke things off, Zach hadn’t even bothered attempting to move on. He moved, sure. He lived his life. But he didn’t move on.

Chris breaks through his pity party with a dramatic sigh. “Well. I’m glad I’m a much better photographer now.”

It’s Zach’s turn to be puzzled. He searches Chris’s face, notes the slight crinkle at the corners of his eyes, the way his lips are pursed like he’s fighting a smile. The hummingbirds turn into albatrosses. “Why’s that?”

“Because those pictures were horrible,” Chris says as he steps in close. “The lighting, the framing. All wrong. So wrong.”

“And this time around you’ll do a better job?” Zach asks breathlessly, his hands settling automatically on Chris’s waist.

When Chris speaks, their lips brush. “You betcha.”


	28. Jealous

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This was written for EntreNous for the prompt "jealous". Warning for angst!

Periwinkle and lavender are as different as night and day, and Chris knows it, but he isn’t in the mood to put up with this shit right now. “They’re practically the fucking same, Zach. Does it really matter? Just pick one!”

He regrets yelling almost immediately, because it makes Zach turn his head in surprise, which puts their faces much too close together. Chris is contorted around Zach’s body, holding two different ties up to his neck so he can look at himself in the full-length mirror. Because obviously he has to be dressed in his entire tux, complete with freshly polished shoes, just so he can pick out a fucking tie. Chris has been plastered to his back for what feels like forever. He can feel the muscles shift every time Zach reaches up to pet the silk. He can smell Zach—the dark, spicy scent the he wears now, probably because Miles bought it for him.

Chris is a mess by comparison, dressed in ratty jeans and a threadbare shirt. He probably smells like cigarettes and the awful cinnamon gum he chews to make sure he _doesn’t_ smell like cigarettes. He wonders what Miles smells like. Angel tears and unicorn piss, probably. The perfect little—

“Chris?”

“Huh?” Chris shakes himself, makes himself look straight ahead into the mirror, instead of at Zach’s mouth.

“I asked if you were okay.”

“Oh. Yeah. Sorry.” He gives the ties a little flick against Zach’s chest and lets his tired arms rest a little more heavily against his shoulders. “Didn’t have my coffee this morning.”

Zach arches an eyebrow at him and smiles. He’s been smiling so often lately. Not those little condescending smirks of his, but authentic, blinding smiles. There’s no doubting that he’s happy.

“So let’s pick one so I can get my caffeine fix,” Chris rushes on. “Come on. Look. Which one?”

Zach finally turns back toward the mirror—thank Christ—and he purses his lips thoughtfully. “Let me see just the blue again?”

Chris bites back his sigh and pulls the lavender one away again, then smooths his palm against Zach’s chest so the blue tie lies flat against his crisp white shirt.

“I like this one,” Zach says, though he doesn’t sound nearly decisive enough about it.

“Me too.” Chris doesn’t really give a good goddamn one way or the other, but he wants Zach to make a decision, so this one torture in a long line of tortures leading up to the wedding will be over already.

“You’re not just saying that because it matches your eyes, are you?”

Zach’s just being cute. He’s grinning at Chris in the mirror, a teasing glint in his eye. He’s making fun of Chris’s narcissism, not implying that he would want Zach to be wearing a tie that matches his eyes when he’s standing at the altar marrying someone else. Chris knows all of that, but it doesn’t keep his stomach from doing nervous cartwheels or keep the blood from rushing to his face.

“Better go with the lavender,” he says, drawing the blue one back, ignoring the sound of silk on skin. He tosses the purple tie over Zach’s shoulder, but this time he doesn’t hold it up for him. He can model it for himself. Chris shoves his hands in his pockets and backs away, out of sight of the mirror.

The next time Zach has this suit on, it’ll be Miles standing next to him. Chris needs to get used to backing away now.


	29. Confident, Playful, Sensual

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This was written for delicada, for the prompt "confident, playful, sensual".

Chris has been waiting for this moment for weeks. Months. Years, if he’s honest with himself. He scrolled through his text messages while he was waiting for his bags at the airport, smiling to himself at Zach’s adorable countdown. 

_10 days until we meet again in the land of syrup. 9 days until spork is reunited. 5 days until i get my hands on that kirk butt. 1 day until the list of countries we’ve had sex in gets just a little longer._

Now, he has his hand on the doorknob of the apartment he’s sharing with Zach in Vancouver, and he can hardly contain his excitement. He’s already half-hard in anticipation, his heart pounding like a teenager about to get laid for this first time.

“I made it,” he calls as he steps through the door. The dogs find him first, sniffing around his shoes and wagging their hind ends and making demanding little grunts until Chris scratches them each behind the ears and submits to a few licks.

When he straightens up, Zach is right there, toeing the dogs out of the way and enveloping him in a tight hug and huffing a warm, delighted laugh into the crook of his neck. Chris wants to look at him, but he can’t, because Zach is holding him too tight, his hands sneaking up under the back of Chris’s t-shirt and splaying across his skin.

“You’re too skinny,” he says in Chris’s ear.

“Hello to you too,” Chris laughs. He turns his head and rubs his cheek against Zach’s sandpapery jaw. He loves that feeling. It’s familiar. It’s home. It sends another surge of blood between his legs.

“Seriously, what’s going on here?” Zach leans back to look Chris in the eye as he moves his hands down to his ass and gives it a firm squeeze. He shouldn’t look as hot as he does with that ridiculous haircut and his eyebrows plucked half to hell, but Chris has an almost Pavlovian reaction to it. His heart clenches and his dick twitches, and he has to pause to collect himself before he can speak.

“Back-to-back movies means we’re doing skinny Kirk this time around,” he says, straight-faced. “Bones must have finally convinced him to eat his salad.”

Zach is shameless. He slides his hands up to the small of Chris’s back and then shoves them into the back of his snug jeans, over his briefs, squeezing again. “God, I don’t even care. I missed this.”

“Just my ass?” Chris asks, arching an eyebrow. “What about the rest of me?”

“Ehhhh,” Zach says, feigning indifference. He doesn’t feign for long though. A moment later, he’s leaning in to lick the hollow of Chris’s neck, then finally— _finally_ —he lifts his head and kisses Chris the mouth.

Chris melts into it helplessly. Zach kisses with authority, like he knows exactly how his mouth can affect people and is proud of it. He pulls Chris in closer, grinding their hips together while he licks his way into his mouth. It goes on forever, and yet it’s over too soon, leaving Chris breathless and weak-kneed.

“I missed the rest of you too,” Zach says as he pulls away just enough to rest their foreheads together. His voice rumbles through Chris’s entire body, heightening the buzz that the kiss spread through his veins. “I plan to show you just how much I missed the rest of you. Every inch of you.”

Chris groans and tilts his head to go for another kiss, but Zach pulls away a little, just enough to be out of reach, enough to be a tease. He starts dragging Chris back toward the living room and the hallway beyond.

“Not in the foyer though. In a bed.”

“A bed. Sure. Sounds great,” Chris says, not paying attention to what he’s saying.

Zach laughs. It’s low and rich and affectionate and it goes straight to Chris’s cock. He closes his eyes and tries to catch his breath.

“You’d say yes to anything right now, wouldn’t you?” Zach teases.

Chris opens his eyes again and musters the presence of mind to flash a grin.

“I don’t know. Why don’t you try me?”


	30. Possessive

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This was written for foreverandeveralone and loves-pie for the prompt "possessive".

Zach’s back hits the door of the trailer, and he tips his head back, instinctively baring his neck seconds before Chris’s mouth meets his skin.

“Chris,” he hisses. When he gets no response other than a bruising grip on his hips and a hint of teeth at his collarbone, he tries again. “Chris. Chris. _Christopher_.”

“Hmm?” Chris hums without detaching his mouth from Zach’s neck.

“You’re being ridiculous,” Zach says. He wishes he could sound a little more like he means it, but alas. He’s only human, after all.

“Am I?” Chris’s fingers are working at the fly of Zach’s pants, but he isn’t making much progress. He’s too hasty to be anything but clumsy. Zach makes no move to help him.

“Yes, you are. I’m gay, in case you’ve forgotten,” Zach reminds him. “And there’s this little thing called acting. I’m not sure you’ve heard of—”

Chris growls, actually growls, and Zach is too taken aback to keep talking. He’s never seen Chris this…intense. This possessive. The moment Justin called cut and told them all they could take a break, Chris dragged Zach off set like he was on a mission, dragged him all the way to his trailer.

“It doesn’t matter,” Chris says, finally giving up on mouthing at Zach’s neck so he can concentrate on jerking his pants open. “It should have been me.”

“Kirk, you mean,” Zach corrects him. “And that’s—fuck—that’s not…”

It’s a little hard to have this conversation when Chris is wrapping a hand around him, his grip just shy of too tight, like he wants to make sure Zach really feels it. Zach lets his head fall back against the door with a thunk, and he closes his eyes.

“Having a…having an interracial relationship at the center of the movie is important too,” he says through gritted teeth. “And having a female character save the day in a male-dominated mov— _ah_ , Chris.”

“Still should have been me,” Chris insists. He leans in for a brief, searing kiss, licking into Zach’s mouth and then withdrawing again. “I thought we were on the same page. You said that if pon farr happened in the new movies it should end with Kirk and Spock together. I think your exact words were that they shouldn’t hide behind ‘no homo bullshit’.”

How is Chris so coherent right now? Zach feels like he has no more blood going to his brain. When he opens his eyes, he sees that Chris is looking down between their bodies, watching the movement of his own hand on Zach’s cock with a strange sort of intensity in his expression. It’s hotter than it should be. Zach shouldn’t encourage him, but he groans.

“I’m just saying, you’re being irrational.”

“Then let me fucking be irrational.” With that, Chris drops to his knees, pushing Zach’s shirt up and kissing his stomach, the crease of his hip, the tip of his cock, his tongue sneaking out to taste. Zach groans again and balls his hands into fists to keep himself from reaching for Chris’s hair. They’ll have his head if he messes it up.

Chris looks up at him. His mouth is impossibly red, and his eyes are full of hunger. Zach has never seen him like this, and it makes his heart clench unexpectedly. He didn’t know Chris felt this way about him—this greedy for him, this determined that no one else come close to breaking into their special world. It makes him feel tender. He reaches down and caresses Chris’s face, runs his thumb across his bottom lip.

“Alright,” he says. “Be as irrational as you want.”

Love rarely makes sense anyway.


	31. Despairing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This was written for thatmysticbafflingwonder for the prompt "despairing".

The atmosphere is festive and celebratory when Chris arrives on set. Zach is already there, and he’s buzzing with energy, hugging everyone two and three times, grinning from ear to ear. Everyone else is thumping him on the back, thumping each other on the back, tapping their styrofoam coffee cups together. Chris is grinning too as he walks over to join them. He can be the king of jadedness even on a good day, but today it seems like anything is possible. Good things can happen. The world can change.

“Chris!” Zach says when he spots him. His smile grows ever so slightly wider. “You saw the news, right?”

“Of course I did.” Chris opens his arms to accept Zach’s warm hug. It seems to go on just a little bit longer than it should, but he doesn’t want to be the one to pull away first. Not when the embrace is warm and snug and Zach hugs are so rare now.

When Zach does pull away, his smile is more subdued. With his eyebrows plucked half to hell and his horrible bowl cut, he should look completely unappealing, but Chris has a permanent soft spot in his heart for this look, and it’s all he can do not to reach out and cup Zach’s face in his hands, press their mouths together in a triumphal kiss.

It’s probably a good thing that Zoe comes over and ruins the moment. She gets on her tip-toes to sling an arm around Zach’s neck and kisses him loudly on the cheek. Then, she nods in the direction of their trailers. “So, are you going to pop the question soon?”

Chris is confused at first. He frowns and follows Zoe’s eyes toward the person sitting on the steps of Zach’s trailer, fiddling with his phone. It’s Miles. Miles is here.

Wait, _pop the question?_

Zach is looking at the floor, bashful in a way that Chris never sees him. He rubs the back of his neck and shakes his head a little bit. “I’ve been thinking about it. It seems like the right time, you know? We’ve been together so long, and there will be a break in my schedule after this—”

“Excuse me,” Chris says, already backing away. There is a dangerous lump in his throat. There are words stuck in there, and he can’t afford to let them come out now. If he was going to confess his feelings, he should have done it years ago, _before_ Zach got into a serious relationship. But he was a coward then, and he’s a coward now. He would rather run away than tough out this conversation. “I’ve gotta…you know…makeup and stuff. I’ll see you guys…”

He should have seen it coming. Of course Zach would want to celebrate such a long-awaited milestone by getting married to the person he loves. And on some level, that’s exactly what Chris wants for him. He’s not a complete dickhead, and Zach is one of his best friends. He wants all good things for him.

So why does his heart feel like it’s shattering into a thousand tiny pieces?

————

Zach watches Chris walk away, and his smile dims for the first time since he woke up next to Miles in the hotel room and saw the news on his phone.

In most ways, the world seems so full of possibility now. It wasn’t that long ago that Zach was convinced the tide of public opinion would not turn quickly enough, or that this extremely questionable Supreme Court would never find a case in their favor. But this feels like a new day, a step in the right direction for their country. There will be more battles, but this one is won, and Zach should be celebrating.

_Is_ celebrating. Zach _is_ celebrating. Except his eyes still follow Chris until he is out of sight, and even then he stares after him, wishing he would come back so they can do that hug over again, maybe this time hold it for a little bit longer.

He thought he was over this. He thought he had convinced his heart that Chris was off limits—and straight, to boot—and that whatever feelings he might have were futile and should be ignored. And he loves Miles. He really does. He is happy with him and their life together.

“Zach?” Zoe’s voice cuts through his thoughts, and he turns toward her, eyebrows raised in a question. She cocks her head to the side and gives him that shrewd look that never fails to scare Zach a little, like she’s caught him with his hand in the cookie jar. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” he answers automatically. But he can’t help but cast his eyes back toward the space Chris left. “I’m fine.”

No one is perfectly happy anyway, right? Everyone settles to some extent. No one gets everything they want in life.

Sure, sometimes it feels like Chris is the _only_ thing he wants, but those feelings can’t possibly last forever. Or at least that’s what he keeps telling himself.


	32. Yearning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This was written for SilentBridge for the prompt "yearning". Warning for infidelity!

“So, how many days until I see you again?” Chris sighs. Zach is torn between smiling and rolling his eyes as he shifts his phone to his other ear and starts putting the cans away in the pantry. He finds it hard to sit still when he’s on the phone with Chris. Luckily for him, Chris has admitted that he likes hearing the sounds of Zach’s life in the background—cars going by on the street, cupboards opening and shutting. He said it helps him create a mental picture. He’s such a cheeseball. Zach would be lying if he said he didn’t love him for it.

“For the fifteenth time, Pine, I’ll be in LA in four days.”

“Why not sooner? Why don’t you leave now?”

This song and dance is familiar, but it’s not unwelcome. The distance is hard, but they are both adult enough to see it as a fact of life and not something to blame each other for. Zach is just glad Chris still misses him. He’s glad because he misses Chris like crazy, and it helps to know that they are in the same boat.

“You know I can’t. I have responsibilities here too.” Zach shelves a can of beets and frowns. He hates beets. It’s a stupid thing to care about, but it’s the kind of thing that gets under his skin these days. Chris’s pantry is beet-less. And he doesn’t leave his shoes sitting by the coffee table. And he doesn’t pout when he doesn’t get his way.

He can feel his mood souring, so he abandons unpacking the groceries and walks out of the kitchen, toward the window. He stares at the sky, over the tops of the buildings, and wonders if it’s the same color blue in LA right now, or if it’s covered in clouds.

“I miss you so much,” Chris says, his voice going soft and rough in a way that never fails to send shivers down Zach’s spine. “I miss you all the time. I hate it that you’re not here.”

“I miss you too, baby,” Zach says around the lump in his throat. “But it’s only four days. It’ll go faster than you think.”

“No, it’ll crawl by, and you know it. And then you’ll get here and time will go twice as fast and you’ll have to leave again.”

Zach smiles—a sad smile. “I’m not even there yet and you’re already dreading my departure?”

“I miss you already.”

“No, you miss me still,” Zach corrects.

“No, I miss you already.” Chris’s voice sounds strained now, like he’s fighting to keep his composure. “Even when you’re here, I miss you. Because it’s not permanent. And you’re not really mine to keep.”

“Chris,” Zach sighs. “I am all you—”

He is cut off by the sound of a key in the lock, and just like every other time, he freezes, momentarily forgetting that he’s allowed to be on the phone when his boyfriend walks into the apartment.

“Hey, I gotta go, okay?” he says quietly. “I’ll see you soon.”

“He home? Actually, no, just…yeah, I’ll see you soon. I love you.”

“Me too,” Zach says, his voice almost a whisper. The footsteps in the front hall are getting closer.

“Bye, Zach.”

Zach ends the call and turns around. The smile on his face feels fake. But then again, most of them are these days.


	33. Lonely

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for the prompt "lonely" (and surprisingly is not angsty at all, in spite of the prompt).

It’s true what they say, about how the worst kind of loneliness is being alone surrounded by people. Chris is having flashbacks to his first year of college, where every room he walked into felt like a difficult math problem for him to solve. _If you have a room full of people who all like each other and add one self-conscious loser, how many hours will it take for them to notice him?_

There are people here he knows. Or sort of knows. He met Babar a few weeks ago at an audition, and he’s been training with him since then. Babar introduced him to Reid, and the three of them have gone out for beers a couple times. They still feel like acquaintances though. Chris feels like the odd man out, the needy one who everyone is taking pity on. Even the invitation to this party felt like an obligation. And that’s why Chris almost didn’t show. He knew he would be miserable.

Babar is holding court over by the couch, surrounded by a cluster of his guests—clients and other actors and people that Chris should have things in common with. Instead of trying to elbow his way into the group, Chris has been staked out by the vegetable tray, munching on baby carrots and hoping he doesn’t look as lame as he feels. When he drains his second beer, he’s glad for an excuse to escape to the kitchen again, leaving the laughter and chatter on the other side of the swinging door.

Unfortunately, he hears the door swing open again just as he’s reaching into the fridge. Wonderful. Now he’s going to have to do the awkward small talk thing so he doesn’t look like an asshole.

“Hey, grab me one while you’re in there?” says a voice. Chris bites back a sigh and grabs a second beer, then straightens up and shuts the refrigerator door.

“Here you go,” he says as he holds one of the bottles out to the stranger.

“Thanks.”

Chris wants to make an excuse to brush past him and go out to the party again, but at the same time, the party is the last place he wants to be. So he shifts awkwardly from foot to foot and stares past the guy’s head and hopes that somehow the decision will be made for him.

“You look like you’re all partied out.” Chris finally looks at the man, just in time to see him give him a blatant once over. He can feel himself starting to blush, and he scrubs a hand down the side of his face in a lame attempt to hide it. The stranger smiles. “I can leave if you want to be alone.”

“No, no, I…” Chris looks away again and twists the lid off his beer bottle. “It’s okay. I just, uh, don’t know that many people here, so…”

“Well then. I’m Zach.” The man—Zach—sticks out his hand, and Chris shakes it, painfully aware of how clammy his hands are.

“Chris.”

“Nice to meet you, Chris. And now you know one more person.” Zach’s grin gets even bigger. He has a nice smile. And pretty, warm brown eyes. “Want to wade back into the fray together? I’ve heard there’s safety in numbers.”

“Uhh, sure.” Chris twists the cap off his beer and tosses it into the trash can under the sink, then holds his hand out to take Zach’s from him and throw it out too. But as he’s about to head for the door, Zach steps into his path, putting a hand out to stop him.

“Or, we could stay here and get to know each other better first. It’s hard to hear out there.”

It feels like a come-on. It looks like a come-on. Zach’s hand is still curled over his shoulder. The way he’s looking at him should be making Chris uncomfortable, but it feels like the first time someone has really seen him in weeks, maybe months, maybe longer. Chris feels like the guy everyone’s eyes pass over lately. But Zach is looking at him like he doesn’t want to look away.

“Yeah,” Chris breathes, looking down for a second and then back up, back into those beautiful brown eyes. “Yeah, I think I’d like that.”


	34. Fascinated

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This was written for Jupiter, for the prompt "fascinated". It is a Sense8 crossover, but there are no spoilers for Sense8.

The first time, it’s terrifying. Chris pushes back from his typewriter and walks out onto the deck for some fresh air. One moment, he’s looking at rows of evergreens dotted with yellow clumps of aspen trees, and the next, it’s rows of faces. There are footlights shining in his face and a wooden stage under his feet. A blonde woman is talking to him…but no, not to him. To the dark-haired man just to the left of him. A dark-haired man who is looking right at him, gaping at him. Chris’s coffee mug is still in his hands. He drops it…

…and all of a sudden he’s back at the cabin, with shards of ceramic at his feet and coffee splattered on his bare feet and the bottom of his jeans.

It shakes him up, even though he tries to tell himself it was a hallucination due to sleep-deprivation. After all, he has been averaging four hours or less of sleep a night. His publisher is breathing down his neck, because he’s already two weeks past his deadline. Between the stress and the coffee and the cigarettes and the lack of sleep, it’s no wonder he isn’t seeing more weird shit.

But it felt so real. He could feel the heat of the lights. He could feel the eyes of the audience on him like a physical thing. And that man’s face. It’s burned into his mind, a brand on the back of his eyelids. He sees it when he falls asleep. He sees it when he wakes up in the morning.

And then he sees it in his living room. Chris is walking in from the kitchen, and the man from the theater is just standing there, looking scared and overwhelmed. There are tears shining in his eyes and his cheeks are wet. Chris feels a surge of empathy so strong that his own throat closes up, and he forgets to be shocked as he crosses the room and puts a hand to the man’s jaw. He gets the chance to feel the scratch of stubble against his fingers before he’s alone again. The smell of unfamiliar cologne lingers in the air. A sadness that doesn’t feel like it belongs to him lingers in his heart.

The night after he sends his finished draft off to the publisher, he opens his eyes in the middle of the night and he isn’t in his own bed. He’s laying next to the man, who stirs and opens his eyes.

“I’m Zach,” he says, like they are meeting in the normal way.

“I know,” says Chris, because he does know somehow, all of a sudden. Just like he knows that he is in a loft in New York. Just like he knows the Zach was crying in his cabin the other day because his boyfriend had just left him.

“You’re Chris,” Zach whispers.

“Yeah.” Chris reaches out. He needs to. The texture of Zach’s jaw has been like a phantom pain in the palm of his hand for days, and the only way to make it better is to touch him again. It’s like electricity shooting up his arm, the shock of reaching out to someone who isn’t really there but is there at the same time. He feels solid, too solid to be merely a vision. Zach curls a hand over his hip and then leans in and rests their foreheads together.

“I don’t know what’s happening,” he says.

“Neither do I. But I don’t care.” Whatever it is, it’s amazing. Chris has never felt this connected to anyone in his life. It’s not just an absence of loneliness. It’s like he has forgotten what it means to be alone. He’s not just one person anymore. He’s part of a whole.

They breathe together until Zach’s eyes flutter shut, until his grip on Chris relaxes and he has drifted back to sleep. But long after that, Chris keeps staring, keeps running his fingers over Zach’s jaw, his lips, his cheekbones. He’s real. He’s real.

When he opens his eyes again, he’s back in his own bed, and he’s alone. But it’s okay. He can feel Zach in his heart, in the blood pumping through his veins. He can feel him as a constant presence in the back of his mind, waiting for Chris to reach out for him.

They will see each other again. They belong to each other now.


	35. Hopeful

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This was written for Ato, for the prompt "hopeful". It is an unofficial sequel to [Jealous](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3583176/chapters/12882820).

“He doesn’t want to get married,” Zach said when Chris opened the door. The words keep replaying themselves in Chris’s mind, but he still can’t make sense of them. He already accepted that this was how things were going to play out: Zach and Miles together as a family, with their two dogs and probably a baby soon, all cozy in their picture-perfect New York apartment. In three days, Zach would be going on his honeymoon and Chris would be flying back to LA and they would see each other less and less until it was just one phone call a year, an obligatory check-in. That was the inevitable sequence of events.

And yet here Zach is, sans Miles, sans the ring that has been hanging around his neck for the past year, the one that was supposed to migrate to his left hand on Saturday.

“I don’t understand,” Chris says at last. Zach is sitting on the edge of the bed, and his thousand-yard stare and the dark circles under his eyes tell the tale of an all-night battle. He hasn’t spoken since he walked in the room, and he hasn’t looked at Chris much either. Chris would comfort him, but he doesn’t know how. It’s barely dawn, and Zach isn’t supposed to _be here_.

“He doesn’t want to get married,” Zach repeats without looking up. “He said he never did. He just wanted to make me happy, and he thought he would come around to the idea.”

“So…so…” God, Chris needs coffee. So much coffee. He looks longingly at the coffee pot, then sighs and crouches down in front of Zach instead, placing a tentative hand on his knee. “So don’t get married? Just….go back to the way things were. You’re living together, you’re happy together.”

Zach finally looks up, but only to shoot Chris a withering look before he lowers his face into his hands. “But I want to get married. I want a wedding. I want a honeymoon. I want a stupid piece of paper that says the government recognizes my right to love whoever the fuck I want to love. _Chris_.”

Fuck, _fuck_. Chris reaches up and strokes his fingers through Zach’s hair, his heart clenching with each heave of Zach’s shoulders. He can’t fix this one. He hates that he can’t fix this one. Zach should never look this broken. He is the most put-together person Chris knows.

“Please don’t tell me I’m being stupid,” Zach says, his voice watery and muffled against his palms.

“You aren’t being stupid,” Chris murmurs. And he means it. The fact is, he wants a wedding someday too. It’s the closest to a fairy tale that any person can get—proclaiming to the world ‘I’ve been searching my whole life, and I’ve decided that this one is the one.’ He may keep the romantic inside of him carefully hidden from Zach—and from most other people—but he can imagine himself standing at an altar plain as day. And he can imagine Zach standing across from him just as easily.

“Come home with me,” he blurts. His cheeks start to heat up just in time for Zach to lift his head and look at him in disbelief.

“What?”

The tear tracks on Zach’s face just make Chris want to double down. He takes a deep breath and says it again. “Come home with me. Come back to LA.”

“I…don’t understand…”

“There’s nothing here for you, Zach. You’re going to have to move out anyway, and…just come stay with me for a while. Until you figure out what to do. I have too much room for one person anyway, and I…” He sighs, drops his hand from Zach’s hair to clasp his fingers. “I miss you.”

He expects incredulity or maybe even anger. It’s hardly a declaration of love, but it still feels misplaced when Zach is heartbroken and came to him for comfort. But Zach doesn’t look shocked or mad. He looks…resigned. A little thoughtful. Hope makes Chris’s heart flutter.

“I miss you too,” Zach says at last. “And…and I miss the way things used to be. It feels like I’ve gotten so off course.”

“Then let’s get you back on course.” Chris squeezes Zach’s hand and gets another squeeze in return. Maybe he isn’t the best one for the job, considering how much he’s felt like he’s falling apart himself over the past few months, but he thinks he can do this. He can be strong for Zach, if that’s what’s required of him.

“Okay,” Zach whispers. He leans forward and rests his forehead against Chris’s, and Chris stops breathing. “Okay, I’ll go home with you.”

That isn’t a declaration of love either, but it’s a start.


	36. Waiting Game

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this for Jouissant, for the song prompt Waiting Game by Banks. Warning for infidelity.

_Baby, I’m thinking it over_   
_What if the way we started made it something cursed from the start_   
_What if it only gets colder_   
_Would you still wrap me up and tell me that you think this was smart_   
_Cuz lately I’ve been scared of even thinking ‘bout where we are_

—

Zach leans across him to pick up the ashtray on the nightstand and set it between them on the bed. “Give me one of those, will you?”

Everyone, including Zach’s real boyfriend, thinks Zach quit. It makes Chris want to go blow a whole lungful of smoke into his suitcase, or maybe take it one step further and empty the ashtray all over his clothes. He fantasizes about it, like he fantasizes about slipping used condoms into Zach’s pockets or texting him dick pics in the middle of the day. But he passes him a cigarette instead, because it’s more satisfying to watch him dig his own grave.

“You shouldn’t let me drag you down, man,” Chris says, his tone caustic. “They keep telling me these things’ll kill you.”

“A lot of things’ll kill you.” Zach snatches the lighter impatiently from Chris’s hand and lights up. After the first drag, he exhales slowly, like a sigh, and leans back against the headboard again. His shoulder brushes Chris’s. Chris nearly jerks away.

“That’s a little trite, even for you,” he says.

“What the fuck does that mean, ‘even for me’?”

It means Zach is a walking cliche, trying to pretend he’s this dark and troubled rogue living in a monochrome world. In his own head, he’s a Byronic hero—his struggles are deep and meaningful, and his volatility is charming. But that’s all bullshiit. It’s an elaborate fantasy he’s constructed for himself to cover up the fact that he’s pushing forty, dating someone half his age, and fucking Chris on the side.

Chris would tell him that, if he wasn’t such a coward. Instead, he blows a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling and shuts his eyes, blocking out the rest of the room for a moment. He’s going to have to stop letting Zach fuck him in hotel rooms. They’re depressing. And this shit is already depressing enough. “Don’t worry about it.” He waits a beat for Zach’s protest, and when it doesn’t come, he adds, “How long are you staying this time?”

“Jesus,” Zach mutters. The mattress shifts, and when Chris opens his eyes, Zach is stretched out on his side, head propped on his hand, studying Chris. “Why do you always have to make this harder than it is?”

“Trust me, it could not be any fucking harder than it is,” Chris snaps. He snuffs out his cigarette in the tray and runs both hands through his hair. It still stinks like sex in here, underneath the smell of smoke, and he wants to run away from it. To the shower, then back home to his own bed. When he thinks back to how happy he was when he picked Zach up from the airport tonight, it seems like a snapshot from someone else’s life. There is no way that guy would let himself be this miserable.

“Hey,” Zach says. His voice is suddenly quiet, tender. Chris looks at him, and for a moment all the normal bullshit is stripped away, and all he sees is Zach, the real Zach, like he was when Chris first met him and he was just on the cusp of swan-diving into his stellar career—when he was still unassuming and genuine. “It’s hard for me too, you know.”

The way Zach is looking at him makes Chris wish so badly that he could be sympathetic and fall into his arms again and give them both the comfort they need. But loving Zach is making him hate Zach. He hates him now. He turns away and gets out of bed.

“I’ll believe that when you leave him,” he says as he shuffles to the bathroom. He slams the door behind him before Zach can reply, even though he knows it probably makes him seem like a child throwing a tantrum.

He’s not really holding out hope anymore anyway. But he’s still waiting. As long as Zach keeps coming back for him, he’ll be waiting.


	37. Call it Heaven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for the song prompt Call it Heaven by Shakey Graves.

_Well babe it’s building ‘til it’s bound to burst_  
 _I can’t forget I’ve been the best of your worst_  
 _We’ll call it heaven but it’s hell on earth_

—

Chris leans his chair back on two legs, and Zach has visions of him going over backward, braining himself on the patio. He slumps down in his chair and stretches out to catch one of the legs with his foot. The idiot is three margaritas in. How does he survive when Zach’s not here?

“Hey. Hey Zach,” Chris says, even though he already has Zach’s full and undivided attention. “Hey, you remember that time we had that barbecue out here and you passed out drunk in one of the lawn chairs?”

Zach chortles and tips his head back to look up at the night sky. “Yeah, I remember that.”

There are no stars up there—too much smog and too much ambient light. Zach can’t really see any stars when he’s in New York either. Instead of staring up and wondering if Chris is seeing the same stars, he knows they both see the same dark emptiness. It’s not really that comforting.

Chris teeters and Zach shifts, hooking his foot behind the chair leg to anchor him. “Careful.”

“You remember what happened after you woke up?” Chris asks, oblivious to Zach’s heroic attempts to save his life.

“We went swimming,” Zach murmurs. He rolls in head to the side, looking at the pool. The lights are on, and it glows bright green, like an oasis on an alien planet. “In our skivvies. Because you were too tired to walk the few steps to your bedroom and get us swimsuits.”

“I’m surprised we didn’t both drown,” Chris laughs.

Zach isn’t surprised. Between the cold water and the way Chris’s limbs kept brushing his under the water, he sobered up fast. He remembers every teenie tiny detail of that night. Even now, when he closes his eyes, he can see fat water drops running down Chris’s nose, dripping off his jaw. The can still see the way the wet cotton of Chris’s briefs clung to him when he climbed out of the water and ran to get towels.

He really wishes that every memory he has of Chris wasn’t bright as a fucking flashbulb. Life would be easier if he could just forget.

Chris leans forward again, and Zach just barely gets his foot out of the way before the chair crashes back to the ground.

“Watch it, Pine,” he barks, but it comes out sounding more amused than annoyed.

“You wanna make out?” Chris asks, leering at him.

Fuck. Suddenly Zach does even know why he’s here. Visiting LA always seems like a good idea until he actually arrives. He went to New York to get away from this, from feelings for Chris that were never going to go anywhere. Being away from him is impossible; being with him is unbearable. Chris is his chronic illness.

Which probably explains why what Zach does next is set down his empty glass and hold out his hand. “Come here.”

The weight of Chris in his lap is a comfort, as are the fingers that push into his hair. He tilts his head back and meets Chris’s mouth and pulls him closer by the hips, then slides his fingers up under the back of his shirt. It’s wonderful. It’s painful. It’s impossible to stop.

“I miss you,” Chris groans as he moves his mouth to Zach’s neck.

Zach looks up at the starless sky again. He closes his eyes. It’s no different. “I miss you too.”


	38. On the Radio

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This was written for itreallyisthelittlethings for the song prompt On the Radio by Regina Spektor.

_Is it worth the risk?_ the asked each other at the beginning. _Name a movie star couple that made it work,_ Zach said. Chris rattled off a list. _What if we break up and end up hating each other?_ Chris asked. Zach told him that would never happen. They told each other what they wanted to hear, because that’s what you do when you’re trying to convince yourself it’s okay to fall in love. You believe whatever you can to make it less scary. You say whatever you can to make the other person give you a chance.

It’s still terrifying at first, even though Chris has never been happier. Every time he wakes up and Zach is there, he gets that swooping feeling in his stomach like he got the first time he stepped on stage in front of an audience. Except instead of being scared he’ll forget his lines, he’s scared he never learned the right lines in the first place. Zach is going to figure out he’s a phony. He’s going to give Chris the boot and cast someone in his life who isn’t such a bumbling moron.

But he doesn’t. Days go by, months go by, and he doesn’t. Chris can feel the fear in Zach too—sometimes their eyes meet and Zach is looking at him like he can’t understand why he’s there—but they are both trying, both fighting, and maybe that’s what really matters.

It hurts when Zach has to get on a plane and fly across the world to shoot a film.

It hurts when he calls, and it’s the middle of the day for him but the middle of the night for Chris, and Chris has to wake up early for work himself, and all he wants to do is sleep, but all he wants to do is hear Zach’s voice—and how can two people exist like this?

It’s all worth it when he picks Zach up at the airport and that smile is the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. It’s Zach’s smile—not the Grand Canyon, not the sunset, not the vastness of the ocean—that makes Chris wonder if maybe there’s a higher power after all. But then again, maybe not. Because how is it fair that he gets to be this happy? He’s done nothing to deserve the way Zach looks at him, but he’s grateful that the universe collected very specific carbon atoms together in very specific ways and placed this man in his life at this time. And if tomorrow a solar flare turns them all into dust where they stand, then so be it. His dust and Zach’s dust will join with stardust, and that’s beautiful too.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Zach asks him on the drive home. Zach insisted on driving, because he got chauffeured around the whole time he was in Paris and he misses the independence of being behind a wheel. Chris was happy to let him, because it means he gets to look at Zach and not at the road.

“I don’t know,” Chris lies. “I’m just looking.”

They make it all the way back to Chris’s house and pull into the driveway and get out, but Chris stops Zach before he can get his bags out of the trunk. He doesn’t have a ring, and he doesn’t have a plan, but he doesn’t need those things. He just needs Zach.

“Let’s get married,” he says. A tear slides down his cheek and Zach’s hand is shaking when it reaches out to brush it away.

“What?” Zach is wide-eyed, terrified. Chris doesn’t blame him. He is too.

“I want to marry you.”

“Chris….I don’t know. I don’t know if…I don’t know.”

It strikes Chris as funny. He chuckles and sniffles and swipes at his wet cheeks, then reaches out and grips Zach’s hands tight in both of his. “I don’t know either.”

That’s the problem. There is very little that he knows. He doesn’t know if he’s right for Zach or if Zach is right for him. He doesn’t know if they’ll still love each other in a month, a year, a decade. He doesn’t even know if they’ll be alive tomorrow to put this plan in motion.

But in light of all those unknowns, what can he do but throw himself into this while he has it? This is crazy, but any other course of action would be crazier.

“Okay,” Zach whispers. He’s smiling through tears now too. “Okay.”

They kiss under the palm tree that God or the universe put there just for them to kiss under. Chris maybe not have all the answers in life, but this one answer is good enough.


	39. Sheets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This was written for RC for the song prompt Sheets by Damien Jurado. Warning for infidelity and a whole lot of angst.

_Lord knows I don’t want to compete_   
_But I still sleep in the very sheets he’s been in_

—

Maybe they rushed it. Maybe that’s the problem. Chris feels better if he can blame something, and he feels best if he can blame himself.

“Did he come by and get his stuff today?” he asks Zach. Zach has his back to him and he’s absently pushing chicken and peppers around in a sizzling pan, but his hand stops moving for a moment. Just a moment. Just long enough. Chris wouldn’t be surprised if he did it on purpose.

“Yeah, he did.”

The two boxes that were sitting in the front hall for weeks were finally gone when Chris got home. It didn’t seem like much stuff—not enough for someone who had been living in this apartments for years. Since jumping to the worst conclusions in Chris’s favorite pastime, he assumes there are other things lying around the place that belong to him, little excuses for him to come back, to see Zach again and again. There are a couple books on the coffee table that don’t seem like things Zach would own. There are a few articles of clothing in the closet that seem too juvenile.

“How’d it go?” Chris crosses his arms over his chest in an attempt to keep himself restrained. “Did he stay long?”

“Nope,” Zach says a little too flippantly. “He just grabbed the boxes and left.”

Chris grinds his teeth and counts to three. “Well, did you talk about anything?”

“Not really.”

Too many of their conversations go like this now—an endless loop of call and response. Chris can’t remember the last time he spoke a sentence that didn’t pitch upward at the end or the last time Zach gave him an answer that sounded honest. Even when he’s just asking whether Zach wants to go out for dinner, his answers sound like lies. _“You want to go to that Italian place on the corner?” “No, the food there isn’t good anymore. I think they changed chefs or something.”_ Or maybe Chris just isn’t the person he wants to be going there with.

Of course, Chris never asks the questions he really should be asking. Like whether Zach is really okay with him moving the rest of his stuff up here. And whether he thinks this is going to work. He knows Zach will lie to him, and he doesn’t want to hear it.

Dinner is silent, but they cuddle up in bed afterward. Chris has a book and Zach is poking around on his tablet and the TV is going in the background, and it should feel cozy and domestic and like everything Chris has ever wanted. Zach’s arm is brushing his, and it seems like some of the tension from earlier has drained away. This is usually Chris’s favorite part of the day. It’s supposed to be the least performative part, where he can strip off all the fakeness he accumulates out of habit during the day. But now he feels like he’s in the middle of a scene, playing a part–and he knows how this play ends.

The sheets smell like detergent, even though he and Zach had sex in them last night.

“Did you do laundry today?” Chris asks.

“Mmhmm,” Zach hums, without even looking up. Does he look a little flushed, or is it just a trick of the light? “Why, did you have something you wanted me to wash?”

Chris wishes Zach would just tell him the truth. He wants him to look him in the eye and say, _“I’m still in love with him. I fucked him right here, earlier today. Right in this bed.”_ It would hurt less. Because the way things are, Zach is not only lying to him, but he also seems to think he’s stupid.

Chris isn’t getting up and walking out the door though, so maybe he’s not as smart as he thought.

“Nah,” he says once the lump in his throat has cleared. He leans in and kisses Zach’s temple, hoping perversely that he’ll jerk away like he knows he doesn’t deserve it. But he doesn’t. He makes a contented sound. A happy sound. It makes Chris’s stomach churn. “I’m going to bed.”

He puts his book down and puts his back to Zach, but he doesn’t sleep. He lays there and imagines Zach’s fingers twisting into long, wavy hair and his low voice murmuring sweet nothings into someone else’s ear. His worst nightmares parade through his mind until the light clicks off and Zach settles, spooning up behind him and curling his arm around his waist.

It would hurt less if he didn’t touch him at all.


	40. Almost Lover

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This was written for SilentBridge for the song prompt Almost Lover by A Fine Frenzy.

_I cannot go to the ocean_  
 _I cannot drive the streets at night_  
 _I cannot wake up in the morning_  
 _Without you on my mind_

—-

They drive Chris’s Mercedes out to the beach on a whim. Later, Chris will be hard-pressed to say whose idea it was in the first place, but it doesn’t really matter. They’re both at fault. 

Chris parks a half mile away, because he doesn’t want the sand getting into his car, and Zach teases him loudly and obnoxious during the whole walk, elbowing him in the ribs and shoving him so he stumbles and falls off the sidewalk, giggling in spite of himself. He wants to be annoyed, but it’s been forever since Zach has been playful like this. They aren’t even drunk. They’re just wired, like kids who’ve stayed up way past their bedtime. So Chris lets himself laugh and watches Zach’s face move in and out of streetlights, though the brim of his hat keeps him always partially shadowed.

Chris wants to snatch the thing off of his head and toss it like a frisbee. Then bury his fingers in his hair. It’s been way too long.

He shoves his hands in his back pockets.

The sidewalk bleeds into sand, and they step out of their shoes and socks and half-jog down to the water. They aren’t alone—there are a couple people out for a nighttime jog and a man with his dog a couple hundred yards away—but it doesn’t really matter at this time of night. No one would be able to tell who they are without getting right up in their faces. And anyway, Chris isn’t worried about it, for once in his life. He has enough on his mind as it is.

Zach bends over to roll up the legs of his jeans, since he didn’t have the foresight to wear shorts like Chris. He looks up and squints through the darkness at Chris. “You remember when we used to come out here at this time of night with the guys?”

Chris laughs, because he does, too well. Back when he and Zach and Patrick and Reid and Babar and sometimes Joe would brainstorm and write and create late into the night, then all cram into someone’s car and drive out to the beach and smoke weed and chase the waves and solve world hunger and pretend like they were hot shit, cutting edge, too cool for the rest of the world. Everything feels different now. Most days, Chris would say they’re all more mature, but tonight, it feels like they’ve all lost something. A certain spark. Nothing inside him feels as alive or electric as it used to.

“I miss it,” he admits.

“Me too,” says Zach, but it’s clear he doesn’t mean it. He straightens up again and wades out into the surf a little ways. Chris stays where he is, squidging his toes in the damp sand and watching Zach, burning this moment into his brain. He probably won’t see it again.

“So, are you nervous?” he asks. The wedding is a couple weeks away, and truth be told, Chris has no idea why Zach’s even here. He should be back in New York preparing. But when he called Chris up and asked if he could stay with him for a couple days—”for old time’s sake”—Chris wasn’t about to say no. He wasn’t even good enough to ask if it was okay with Miles. Because Miles has to know their history, right?

Does being best friends for years and then fucking their way across Europe and then pretending it never happened afterward count as a history?

“Nah,” Zach says. For once, Chris can’t tell if he’s being honest or not. “I’m excited. But tired. I just had to get away and recharge for a while.”

Finally Chris shuffles forward until the waves are flowing over his toes, until Zach is at his side. “With me?”

Bullshit is for young people, and Chris feels old—far older than his years. He doesn’t want to spend this time talking in riddles. Zach shoots him a disappointed look, like he’s breaking the rules, but he doesn’t give a shit if he is.

Finally, Zach sighs. “Yeah, with you. Of course with you. You…you relax me.”

Chris wishes he could say the same, but Zach does the opposite of relax him. He winds him up. He gets his blood boiling, in both good and bad ways. The way Zach makes him feel….nothing else in the world feels like it. Los Angeles is haunted in his absence. Chris burns when he’s here and aches when he’s gone.

And in two weeks he’s going to have to stand there and watch him get married to someone else. Maybe he’ll move after that. Maybe he’ll sell the house and go somewhere far away from the ocean. Wyoming. Montana. Colorado. A cabin in the middle of nowhere.

He runs his tongue slowly across his lips, then lets out a slow breath. Then kicks some water at Zach, wetting his jeans. Zach sputters and laughs.

“Hey, fuck you.” He kicks water back, and Chris laughs a genuine laugh as he skitters away. But this time Zach leans down and scoops the water with his hands, flicking it at Chris and wetting the whole front of his shirt.

“Cut it out, asshole!”

They run back and forth through the waves for who knows how long, until they are both dripping and exhausted and all played out. They’re going to absolutely ruin Chris’s car on the drive back, but he doesn’t care. He can get a new car. He can get new everything. Everything but Zach. There’s only one of him.

“I’m glad you came,” Chris says as they stumble their way back up the beach, shoulders bumping and hands brushing. Zach looks at him for a moment, then slings an arm around him and rests his head on his shoulder.

“So am I.”

Chris’s heart leaps into his throat, but he puts his arm around Zach’s waist anyway, and he doesn’t let go until he has to.


	41. Gravity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for thatmysticbafflingwonder for the song prompt Gravity by Sara Bareilles.

_But you’re neither friend nor foe_   
_Though I can’t seem to let you go_   
_The one thing that I still know is that you’re keeping me down_

—-

One step inside the club, Chris already wishes he had the willpower to stay home. The place is dark, and the music is so loud it’s like a physical thing, the throb of the bass pressing on him just as hard as the bodies he has to wade through to make his way to the bar. When Zach called him earlier today—”Hey, man, I’m in town. Come out with us.”—he had been wary but unable to say now. Now, he is kicking himself for it. And he hasn’t even found Zach yet.

The sea of people eventually spits him out at the bar, which he clings to while he tries to orient himself. Zach texted him that they have a table in the back, but he isn’t sure where exactly the “back” is supposed to be now. Just when he’s about to strike out on another exploratory expedition though, a hand settles on the small of his back, and sandpaper stubble grazes his cheek before Zach places a drunk, sweet-scented kiss on his cheek.

“What is that, an appletini?” Chris says as he swivels and peers down at Zach’s empty glass.

“Shut up, dude.” He smears the words across the skin of Chris’s ear, then leans past him to flag the bartender. Somehow he manages to order through a series of elaborate hand gestures and not much else. Chris doesn’t even bother trying to voice his preferences. Something tells him he’s about to be drinking something cloyingly sweet and syrupy and sure to have him waking up tomorrow regretting everything.

Then again, he already knows that he could stay stone cold sober and still wake up tomorrow with regrets. Zach’s hand is still on his waist, for one. He hasn’t shrugged it off yet, for another.

There is no point trying to talk over the music while they stand there, but before long they are both holding full martini glasses, and Zach takes his hand to lead him toward the far wall. In the back corner, the music is a little less loud, and it is a little less dark. Most of the people draped all over each other on the bench seats seem to be at least a decade younger than Chris. Of course, Zach sits down right in the midst of them and pulls Chris down next to him. He barely braces himself in time not to spill his drink.

“I can’t stay long.” It’s smart to plant the seeds of his exit now, he thinks. Maybe he’ll just drink this one drink and go. The only reason he is here is because he wants to prove to himself that he can stay friends with Zach, but maybe they are going to be coffee friends, not clubbing friends. Fuck, aren’t they too old for clubbing anyway?

“Aww, baby,” Zach pouts, knocking their shoulders together. “Planning your escape already? Come on. I’ve missed you.”

This is Chris’s problem: Zach seems sincere. Even in the uneven lighting, the colors that flash light and dark across his face, his eyes seem to be reflecting a legitimate sense of upset. And they have so much power over him, those eyes. Somewhere inside, Chris is still a dorky little kid who’s thrilled to have an invitation to sit at the popular table. He’s long since forgotten that Zach was a dorky little kid once too. Not even that long ago. Now he’s the silver-tongued devil on Chris’s shoulder, the vice he can’t shake.

When Chris doesn’t answer him and hides his frown in his drink, Zach only pouts harder. “I could come to your place instead then. We should catch up.”

That’s an even worse idea, but still, half an hour later, Chris finds himself crawling into the back of a cab and scooting over so Zach can climb into next to him.

“I didn’t want to drag you away from your, uh, friends,” Chris says. Are they really friends? And does Chris really care about dragging Zach away from them? If he could drag Zach all the way back into the real fucking world, then maybe all their problems would be solved.

“Don’t worry about it,” Zach says, walking his fingers across the seat to wrap his hand around Chris’s. “I can see them any time.”

“You can see me any time,” Chris mutters. Or he could have. Once upon a time. That seems so long ago though, another life almost. He hasn’t changed that much, but Zach has. No matter how unrecognizable he gets, Chris still can’t seem to get rid of this dark swirl of feelings, this whirlpool that opens up in his gut every time Zach is nearby.

“I’m seeing you now,” Zach says with a grin.

The cab pulls away from the curb, and Zach pulls on Chris’s hand, tugging him close until he can wrap an arm possessively around his shoulders. He turns his head and places a kiss on Chris’s temple, and Chris’s eyes flutter shut in spite of himself. He wants to pull away, but that’s also the last thing he wants. And pulling away would only make it worse anyway. Zach is a Chinese finger trap. The harder Chris struggles, the worse it gets.

“I missed you too, you know,” Chris says, and hates himself for it.

“I know,” Zach says. There is smugness in his voice, and it rubs Chris the wrong way, but not enough to make him resist when Zach pulls him up for a kiss. There is no point fighting the inevitable.


	42. Please Forgive Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This was written for foreverandeveralone for the song prompt Please Forgive Me by Bryan Adams.

_Still feels like our first night together_  
 _Feels like the first kiss, it’s gettin’ better, baby_

—-

“Ngh, ugh, I’m so fucking tired,” Chris whines as he pulls off his scarf and drapes it over the hook by the door. “How long were we at that party? 25 years?”

Zach comes up behind him and wraps his arms around his waist, nuzzling into the back of his neck. “It’s only ten o’clock, old man.”

Chris sighs and sinks back into Zach’s embrace, ignoring the cold melting snow dripping down his collar. He stopped missing mild LA winters ten years ago. The seasons in New York are invigorating–it feels like there is always something to look forward to. Or maybe it’s just Zach that makes him feel that way.

“I really am an old man,” Chris groans. “Completely done by ten on a Friday. If twenty-year-old me could see me now.”

Zach snorts and nibbles at the sensitive skin behind his ear, making him groan. “Honey, twenty-year-old you was exactly the same.”

He’s got a point. Chris sighs again and shrugs out of Zach’s arms so he can finish pulling off his jacket, then stepping out of his boots. Bed is waiting–the promise of cuddling up and getting warm and maybe doing a little reading before passing out way too soon. Maybe it sounds lame to an impartial observer, but Chris has long since passed through his phase of caring about whether or not he’s lame. Luckily, miraculously, his social butterfly of a husband seems to love him just the way he is.

And said husband seems to have plans other than snuggling tonight. As soon as Chris has straightened up again and kicked his shoes out of the way, he finds frigid fingers creeping up under his shirt, tugging him backward again.

“I don’t mind coming home early, you know,” Zach murmurs.

“Oh yeah?” Chris turns in Zach’s arms and raises his eyebrows at him, playing dumb. Zach is nothing if not predictable. Seeing and being seen always gets him all keyed up. He has called Chris his arm candy more than once, more than a hundred times, though Chris has found it harder and harder to believe as the lines on his forehead and at the corners of his eyes have deepened and all the brown in his hair has been replaced with gray. But still, when their eyes meet from across a room, there is still that spark that was there all those years ago. Zach likes to show him off. He likes to go out and let dozens of frivolous people and conversations demand their attention, then come back and draw every scrap of Chris’s attention back to himself.

It’s not hard for him to do. All thoughts of getting in bed with a book fly out of Chris’s mind when Zach leans in and kisses along his jaw, tracing one finger above the waistband of his jeans. He tips his head back so Zach can suck on his pulse point, and he pushes his hips against Zach’s thigh, a low, satisfied hum escaping his lips.

“You’re more exciting than a roomful of people,” Zach says, lifting his head to speak against Chris’s mouth, then kiss him softly.

Chris chuckles and tugs impatiently at Zach’s sweater. “No one ever accused me of being exciting before.”

Zach lets Chris pull his shirt off over his head, but then he grabs for his hands, using them as leverage to push Chris into the wall and then pin his wrists up by his shoulders. He abandons them a moment later to palm Chris’s crotch, but Chris doesn’t move–he’s too busy being transfixed. Is it possible that Zach is more beautiful now than he was twenty years ago? It certainly seems like it. Maybe Chris is blinded by love, but maybe he doesn’t care.

“You’re the most exciting thing in my life, Chris.” Zach’s voice is oddly serious, considering that his fingers are busy peeling apart Chris’s fly. “You always have been.”

Chris would argue some more if his heart wasn’t tap-dancing in his chest. If this is what Zach feels too–this hand-shaking, stomach-turning love that hasn’t dulled or decayed with time–then maybe he isn’t lying. He pushes into Zach’s hand and reaches for the back of his neck to pull him in for another kiss, a more passionate one this time. Zach licks into his mouth and reaches into his underwear to wrap his fingers around him.

“Will your old man knees hold out if I blow you against the wall like we’re young again?” he asks, his mouth curving into a grin against Chris’s lips.

“Will your old man knees hold out?” Chris snarks back.

Zach kisses both his cheeks and pushes his pants down off his hips, then chases them down to the floor. “I guess we’re about to find out.”

It turns out that neither of their knees are up to the task, and they end up in their comfortable bed anyway, but it doesn’t matter. It still feels as good as the very first time.


	43. Careless Whisper

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This was written for mightymads for the song prompt Careless Whisper by Wham!. Warning for infidelity and much sadness.

_Maybe it’s better this way_  
 _We’d hurt each other with the things we want to say_  
 _We could have been so good together_  
 _We could have lived this dance forever_

—-

Zach excels at nothing so much as self-sabotage. He would put money on the fact that his ability to find the healthiest and most wonderful things in his life and excise them with scalpel-like accuracy is unparalleled. Every relationship he ever had that might had made him a better man. Every friendship with mature, talented people that brought out the best in him. Even his beautiful house in LA, which never quite felt like home, because it was too perfect for him, more than he deserved. When things are good, he panics. When things are chaos, he relaxes. Anything that makes him feel secure needs to be burned to the ground.

Exhibit A: Christopher Whitelaw Pine, whose continued presence in his life is baffling, to say the least. It was good between them, in the early days. No, better than good. Perfect. There was chemistry, easy conversation, playful banter. Zach liked Chris too much, more than anyone he had ever met. So he slept with him. Because if anything was going to ruin it, it’d be that, right? But it didn’t ruin it. Chris proved unruinable. He kept coming back, but he never pressured Zach for more. He was content with a friendship with sex on top, until Zach was forced to admit it wasn’t just sex for him. Chris glows white-hot, burned into all his waking thoughts. He loves him. He told him so. Chris said it back.

The house of cards has become too large, and Zach isn’t just going to wait around for someone else to huff and puff and blow it all down.

He makes sure the guy he picks is as far away from Chris as a person can get. Young and wild, dark hair and dark eyes. He lets himself get papped with him. He purposefully “runs into” mutual friends. Then, he goes home and waits for the call.

Chris doesn’t disappoint this time.

“Fuck you, Zach.” The voice snarling in his ear doesn’t even sound like him. But that makes it easier to take. “I knew it was just a matter of time before you pulled this shit with me.”

Of course he knew. Because Chris knows him—too, too well. Which just means he should have known better.

“Mmm,” Zach hums, like he’s bored, like Chris is telling him about his day, not pushing their relationship off a cliff. No, no. That’s not right. Zach is the one that pushed it off the cliff. Chris just needs to howl over the wreckage for a while.

“You’re not even going to try to explain yourself? You’re not going to tell me it was a mistake?”

Sure, it was a mistake, but it was also on purpose, so no, Zach isn’t going to tell him that.

“Look, Chris, it was never going to work with us. You know that.”

"Oh, fuck you, _fuck you_.” Chris is crying now, his voice watery. He sniffles into the phone. “We were doing just fine. Don’t you dare try to blame this on some cosmic thing, Zach. You fucked this up. It’s your fault.”

Zach laughs. It’s his fault alright. He regrets it already, hates the way his heart is throbbing in his chest, like it’s trying to jump through his ribs and escape the man who mistreated it. But it’s better this way. He hurt himself, which means Chris will never get the chance to.

“Do you even love me anymore?”

How can Chris’s voice still be so hopeful. Why would he want someone like Zach to love him, someone who would do something so horrible to him? It’s tempting to tell him that he does, that he’ll never love anyone in his life as much as he loves Chris. But that would be real cruelty. The best thing he can do right now is give Chris a clean break, a reason to hate him.

“No,” he says, and makes himself mean it. He is an actor, after all.

The line goes dead.


	44. For Your Entertainment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This was written for thatmysticbafflingwonder for the song prompt For Your Entertainment by Adam Lambert.

_Oh, I bet you thought that I was soft and sweet_  
 _‘Ya thought an angel swept ya off your feet_  
 _Well I’m about to turn up the heat_  
 _I’m here for your entertainment_

—-

“Sit,” Chris says, then gives Zach a shove. Zach goes down easy, already unsteady on his feet from too much alcohol and too much dancing. When he reaches up to pull Chris down with him, Chris steps out of reach, mischief glittering in his eyes.

“Hey, c’mere,” Zach slurs.

“Nuh-uh.” Chris shakes his head and then turns around. “I’m gonna put on some music.”

Zach feels too heavy to protest or get up and go after him. Too heavy and too busy watching Chris walk away. _Hate to see you go but I love to watch you leave_ , he thinks, a little hysterically, a giggle bubbling up and out of his mouth. Chris shoots him a coquettish look over his shoulder. And that’s…that’s something else. Zach still can’t believe this is happening. When Chris wanted to dance with him in the club, that was one thing—just two drunk guys fucking around. But the kiss in the elevator definitely wasn’t fucking around, and the way Chris’s hips sway the last few steps toward the TV doesn’t look like fucking around either.

Chris grabs the remote off the top of the dresser and starts flicking through the channels. There are about a million of them, because this hotel is too fancy to only have basic cable, but eventually Chris finds the music channels, then settles on one. Nina Simone’s voice fills the room. Zach groans and tips his head back against the couch.

“Pine,” he says. It comes out like a warning, but he’s not sure what he’s warning him about. Chris looks like he knows exactly what he’s doing. When he turns back around, he’s grinning from ear to ear, clearly pleased with himself.

“Yes, Zachary?”

“Come here,” Zach says, hoping this time it’ll work. The world is upside-down and touching Chris might put it rightside up again. Might.

“Mmm, you’re so impatient.” Has Chris’s voice always sounded like that? Like if good, aged scotch had a sound. He shrugs out of his jacket and starts to sway in time to the music—not theatrically, but slowly, sensually. Zach didn’t even know he could move his body like that. Normally he’s all exaggerated gestures and clumsiness, but all of a sudden he has this contained, effortless grace. His shoulders shimmy in this fluid, jazzy little way that makes Zach want to chew on the edge of his fist. Then, he shoves his hands in his pockets and shuffles toward Zach with an Astaire-like finesse, stops just far enough away that he can’t be touched.

“You little minx,” Zach murmurs, gripping his own knees. Chris lets out a pleased chuckle, the corners of his eyes crinkling.

“What?” he asks innocently.

“All that spastic flailing on the dance floor, and now here you are…” He trails off when Chris rolls his hips, tucking one hand up under the hem of his ridiculous too-thin v-neck and hooking his thumb in the waistband of his pants. Zach’s mouth goes dry, his eyes honing in on the little strip of flat stomach as if he hasn’t seen Chris shirtless countless times already. This is different, though. The sparkle in Chris’s eyes makes it different, and the way his mouth curls like he’s getting away with something naughty.

His hips keep swaying, and his feet do a lazy, adorable little Broadway-esque shuffle, and then finally he slinks his way into Zach’s personal space bubble, stepping in between his spread knees and reaching out to push his fingers into Zach’s hair. “You thought you were going to bring me up here and seduce me, didn’t you? You thought you were going to be the suave one.”

Zach may have underestimated Chris. But you can never really know what it’s going to be like, can you? When you cross that line between friends and lovers. Chris is a goof, but apparently he’s this too. Apparently he can hypnotize Zach with the casual swing of his hips and send all his blood rushing south with one playful tug at his hair.

“You’re always a surprise,” Zach admits, trying not to be embarrassed at how hoarse his voice sounds. Chris has upended Zach’s expectations of him dozens of times since they first met. Maybe it shouldn’t be a surprise that he’s doing it yet again.

“I’m not out of surprises yet,” Chris says. He immediately proves it by climbing into Zach’s lap, straddling him, stroking his fingers down the back of Zach’s head, combing through his hair, trailing down the sides of his neck, then stopping at his chest, bunching up the fabric of his shirt in his grip. This time, when he rolls his hips, Zach can feel how hard he is. He groans and reaches for the bottom of Chris’s shirt, and Chris lets him, lifting his arms obligingly so he can pull it up and off.

“I hope you’re never out of surprises,” Zach says as he glides his fingers across Chris’s stomach, then trails them upward so he can thumb roughly at one of his nipples, earning himself a satisfying gasp. At least this new, sexy Chris can be ruffled too.

“Don’t worry.” Chris grins and reaches for Zach’s fly. “I’ll keep you on your toes.”


	45. Brooklyn Baby

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This was written for the song prompt Brooklyn Baby by Lana Del Rey (although I'm not sure how much I actually ended up fitting the prompt in this case xD).

_Well, my boyfriend’s in the band_   
_He plays guitar while I sing Lou Reed_

—

The fog spills over the tops of the buildings across the street, the cold gray washing out the sky and making it seem like the city floated away in the middle of the night, like they are living in the clouds now. Down on the street, the people going by are clutching their coats and ducking their head against the frost. Zach shivers, even though he’s warm and cozy inside. A little too warm maybe. Chris keeps the heat cranked, then ends up laying around half-dressed—not that Zach feels much like complaining about the latter state of affairs.

The first few twangy notes pull Zach away from the window. Chris is sitting up in bed with his guitar perched on his inclined thigh, his brow pinched as he plucks his way through an unfamiliar melody. His chest is bare, and Zach lets his gaze linger on his naked shoulders, the curve of his bicep, the shifting muscles in his forearm. And his fingers—long, graceful fingers that arch over the fretboard and dance their way across the strings, fingers that seem like they were made to create music. If Zach closes his eyes, he can feel the calluses on his skin, running across his lips, the insides of his thighs. If he could write music, the first song he would write would be an ode to Chris’s hands.

But he isn’t that musical. His banjo is sitting in the corner collecting dust, a hobby long forgotten, and even when he did play it, he plucked out familiar tunes. He never had the ear for venturing into uncharted territory. Chris, on the other hand, has scads of effortless talent. It’s a little unfair. Zach would be green with envy if he didn’t love him so much, and if he didn’t get to reap the benefits.

Chris looks up and notices he’s being watched, and a self-conscious smile slides onto his face, even as his fingers transition easily into a more familiar tune.

“Sing for me, Zach,” he says, his voice still rough from sleep.

Zach chuckles and shakes his head, then hides his smile in his coffee cup. He walks over to the edge of the bed and stands there swaying while Chris plucks his way through jazzy licks. After a few moments, he stops showing off and settles into a repetitive progression of chords, raising his eyebrows expectantly at Zach.

“Sing,” he says again. The word might be a command, but when Chris says it, it comes out gentle and coaxing. He plucks at Zach’s heartstrings as effectively as he plucks the strings of that damn guitar. Zach sighs and reaches out to set his coffee on the edge of the dresser, then climbs onto the foot of the bed, leaning forward to shove the sheets out of the way and wrap a hand around Chris’s ankle, running his thumb across his skin.

_“You are the promised kiss of springtime, that makes the lonely winter seem long,”_ he sings quietly, the smiles when Chris plays a complicated little riff to punctuate the line, humming along with the notes. He sings the next bit a little more boldly, his eyes on Chris’s hands. _“You are the breathless hush of evening, that trembles on the brink of a lovely song.”_

_“You are the angel glow that lights the star_   
_The dearest things that I know are what you are._   
_Someday my happy arms will hold you_   
_And someday I’ll know that moment divine_   
_When all the things you are, are mine.”_

He comes to the end of the stanza and lays his head against Chris’s knee, closing his eyes as Chris’s voice takes over to sing through the end of the song. It’s a perfect moment in a long line of perfect moments, a life that has become more than he ever thought it could be. Being with Chris, living with Chris, makes everything feel…more. He makes Zach feel young and makes him feel like he’s been alive a thousand years. He makes New York feel more like home, even though New York has never really been able to contain him fully. Out there it’s cold and gray, but in here, Chris bleeds color and warmth into everything.

Chris strums the last chord and lets it hang in the air as he reaches out and threads his fingers into Zach’s hair, petting him like a cat. “What do you want to do today, babe?”

Zach makes a contented sound and runs his hand up the back of Chris’s calf, smiling to himself. “Lay in bed all day. Watch old movies. Pretend we’re kids who just moved to New York and are too cool to do anything but smoke and drink coffee and think artsy thoughts.”

“I think you do think you’re too cool to do anything but those things,” Chris says. Zach feels him shift to put the guitar down, and then he’s tugging Zach closer, in between his spread legs, and planting a kiss on his mouth.

“Only sometimes,” Zach admits. Not that he’s telling Chris anything he doesn’t know.

“Hmm. Well. That sounds like a good day to me,” Chris says indulgently. He smooths the hair off Zach’s brow and then kisses him there.

“I was kind of enjoying your shy-yet-self-assured jazz guitarist with an old soul routine though. We should do more of that.”

Chris grins, the corners of his eyes crinkling. “Maybe in a minute.”

He leans in for another kiss.


	46. Up Close and Personal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This was written for vulcan-science, who wanted rimming with Chris sitting on Zach's face. Needless to say, it is straight-up porn.

“Come here,” Zach purrs, sliding his hand up the back of Chris’s thigh and tugging. Chris detaches his mouth from Zach’s neck and swings his leg across Zach’s hips so he’s straddling, thinking that’s what he’s asking for. But Zach shakes his head, shifting his grip to Chris’s ass and squeezing. 

“No, bring that ass up here.”

Chris pushes himself up on his hands and looks down at Zach’s face, frowning in confusion. “Huh?”

Zach chuckles, reaching up to brush his fingers across the wrinkles of befuddlement on Chris’s forehead. “You’re adorable. I said, come up here and sit on my face, Christopher. Want to put my mouth on you.”

Actually, no. That’s not what Zach said at all. Because if that was what Zach had said, all Chris’s blood would have rushed to his face thirty seconds ago, instead of just now. He sputters and squirms, half-heartedly trying to get away from the fingers that are now pressing inward and petting his hole.

“What? No. You want me to…? No. That’s not…”

“It’s not what, exactly?” Zach asks, raising his eyebrows. His fingers continue their infuriating stroking, and Zach’s other hand has joined the game now too, kneading and spreading him open. “It’s not incredibly fucking hot? It’s not something I would enjoy immensely? Let me be the judge of that. Now fucking get up here.”

It’s not like Zach has never rimmed him before. Chris is always a little self-conscious at first, but it usually only takes a few seconds under the ministrations of Zach’s talented tongue before he completely forgets to be embarrassed and starts moaning like a whore. And he knows Zach loves it, probably about as much as Chris does. But this seems…different somehow. More intimate. A little scary.

“Don’t make me ask again,” Zach says, pitching his voice low. He’s all bark and no bite, but that doesn’t keep Chris’s stomach from flipping. His face gets even hotter, but he already knows he’s going to comply. Zach will make it worth it. He always does. 

Chris gets up on his knees and turns around. He starts backing up tentatively, but Zach is having none of it, wrapping an arm across Chris’s waist and tugging him roughly backward, so he overbalances and has to put a hand out to catch himself, keep himself from falling face-first into Zach’s crotch. Zach waits for him to steady himself, pulls on him again, and then there it is–Zach’s nose nestled against his tailbone, Zach’s lips on the cleft of his ass. Chris shudders, his mouth falling open on a soundless moan, even though Zach’s tongue hasn’t touched him yet. 

“Mmmm, Chris, you have no idea…” But Chris may never get to know what he has no idea about, because then Zach is nosing in between his cheeks, and Chris feels the first slow lick across his hole.

“Fuck, _fuck_ ,” he gasps, reaching behind him with one arm to steady himself on the headboard. Zach groans and licks him again, swiping across the ring of muscle with the flat of his tongue. Chris bites down hard on his bottom lip and tries to control his breathing, tries not to feel so shy. He can feel that his face is flaming, the blush creeping its way down his neck and across his shoulders, but Zach seems oblivious to his modesty. He pulls Chris down harder against his mouth and stabs at his hole with his tongue, forcing a whimper out of Chris’s mouth.

The noises Zach is making rumble through Chris’s entire body, amplifying his own need. Zach sounds like a hungry animal, purring and groaning against Chris’s skin, his lips moving like they’re forming words that Chris can’t make out, a language he doesn’t speak. Chris’s thighs shake with the strain of holding himself upright, holding himself still. He grips the headboard so tightly that he fears the wood might splinter in his hands–but he doubts he would even notice if it did.

“God, Zach,” he groans, reaching down to grasp the base of his dick with one shaky hand, trying to stave off the need to come for as long as possible. A moment later, Zach is batting his hand away and gripping him himself. His hand doesn’t move though, just cradles Chris in a loose fist, like his only purpose for touching him is to keep him from touching himself. It’s infuriating. It makes Chris writhe, which only means he exposes more of himself to the ministrations of Zach’s mouth. Zach cranes his neck to tongue at the seam of Chris’s balls and lick across his taint before circling his hole again and again. It’s too much and it’s not enough. Chris feels like all of his skin is on fire now, like he’ll burn down to ashes any moment now.

“Zach, please,” he begs. He tries in vain to thrust through Zach’s fist, but Zach makes a small sound of admonishment and grips Chris’s hip with his free hand to hold him still. Chris feels like a mess, sloppy with saliva and leaking precome and sweat beading on his forehead. 

“Want you to come just like this,” Zach says, and Chris can feel every single word–hot breath and stubbly lips against his sensitive skin. “Just from my tongue.”

Chris moans, squeezing his eyes shut and letting his head tip back and focusing entirely on the way Zach is making him feel. He feels loose and open now, like Zach could push him face down on the bed right now and slide into him in one smooth motion. Zach’s tongue slips shallowly inside him, then withdraws to press flat against him, sending sparks zinging up his spine and making lightning burst behind his eyelids. It builds until Chris thinks he can’t take it anymore, until he is sure he’s going to die from it, and then suddenly the dam bursts. He sobs with relief, shivering as he empties himself onto Zach’s chest.

As soon as Zach lets go of him, he lets go of the headboard and falls forward and the to side, landing on the mattress with his head somewhere in the vicinity of Zach’s knees. He hears Zach chuckling and then shifting around, probably cleaning himself up a little, and then he reorients himself so his face appears in front of Chris’s, his fingers reaching out to push hair off his sweaty brow.

“See, that wasn’t so bad, was it?” Zach asks, a smug smile on his face.

“I hate you,” Chris rasps, completely insincerely. He doesn’t have the brain cells left to say much else.

Zach’s grin grows even wider. “I love you too.”


	47. Pumpkin Spice and Everything Nice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This was written for the prompt "first day of fall".

Of course a guy who grew up in Southern California, where there are two seasons–summer and not-summer–would be overly enthusiastic about the prospect of spending his first autumn New York.

“Do you have any idea how ridiculous it is to drink a Pumpkin Spice Latte in LA in mid-September when it’s like 80 degrees outside?”

“Yeah, Chris. I know. I lived there for a long time, remember?”

Chris elbows Zach in the ribs, but he’s smiling, eye crinkles and all. His excitement is contagious. And yet Zach is going to have to shut it down.

“Anyway, fall doesn’t start until the end of September. No pumpkin until then.”

Chris is so appalled he actually stops walking, right there in the middle of the sidewalk. Which is liable to get a person killed in this city. Zach marches back to him and grabs his elbow, shooting an apologetic look at the middle-aged woman who almost ran over him and then dragging him along.

“But that’s weeks away, Zach,” Chris pouts. “It feels like autumn now. It’s 60 degrees today! That’s practically winter!”

“Oh, sweet summer child,” Zach says. He keeps his arm looped through Chris’s and drags him close. “How much you have to learn.”

——

A week later, they are walking the dogs, and Chris stops to point at a tree. 

“Look!” he says.

It looks like your average tree to Zach. He rocks forward on his toes and squints, ignoring Skunk’s impatient pull at the leash, then shakes his head, shrugs. “What am I looking at?”

“Right there!” Chris says, pointing again, pointing harder. How does one even point harder? Chris manages it though, and manages to be adorable doing it too.

Zach sees it now. There is one little sprig of reddish leaves in one of the uppermost boughs of the tree. The rest of the branches are still laden with green, but apparently those five or sex red leaves are incredibly exciting, because Chris is practically vibrating on the spot.

“It’s still not fall yet,” Zach says. “Leaves mean nothing.”

Chris deflates, shoulders slumping, like he actually thought he was going to win on a technicality. 

“Patience, my dear.” Zach holds his hand out until Chris slips his own into it. He brings Chris’s cold fingers to his mouth and blows. “It’ll come soon enough.”

——

Chris waits until they take their first steps into the park to take his first sip from his coffee cup. Finally, _finally_ , he got his pumpkin spice latte, but he insisted on enjoying it in the proper ambiance, so here they are. 

It’s almost magical, seeing the city–and the season–through new eyes like this. Chris’s eyes are wide as he takes in the red and yellow and orange leaves. He breathes deeply of the crisp, cool air. He keeps looking over at Zach and smiling shyly, squeezing his hand. 

“It’s not like you’ve never been here in the fall before,” Zach says. He’s trying for slightly condescending bemusement, but it comes out overly fond. 

“Yeah, but…I’m here for good now. This…” Chris trails off and shakes his head, sipping his hot coffee carefully. Zach stares at him, smile widening.

“What?”

Chris sighs, the color rising in his already red cheeks. “This feels like the first autumn of the rest of my life, you know?”

Zach laughs and detaches his hand from Chris’s so he can slide his arm around his waist and pull him closer, plant a kiss on his cheek. 

“Mine too,” he murmurs, and kisses Chris again.


	48. I Want the World to Know

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This was written for thatmysticbafflingwonder, who wanted Chris being irrationally jealous of Zach hanging out with Sofia Boutella during Trek filming.

“Chris!” Zach exclaims as he walks through the door. His startled expression does little to settle Chris’s stupid, irrational upset. Zach gave him a key to his room, after all. Why should he be surprised when Chris actually uses it?

“Hey,” Chris says, standing up from his perch on the end of Zach’s bed and shoving his hands into his back pockets to keep himself from reaching out. “Did you have a nice time?”

His voice sounds all wrong, and he knows it, and Zach realizes it too, his eyes narrowing as he shrugs out of his jacket and throws it down on the bed, along with his room key, his phone, his wallet.

“Yes,” Zach says, drawing the word out while he scrutinizes Chris’s face. He breaks eye contact for a moment to bend down and pet the dogs, who are wriggling around his feet. “We had a lot of fun. What about you? Did you manage to entertain yourself in my absence?”

Chris shrugs away the questions, because he’s too preoccupied, too hung up on Zach’s use of the word “we”. He and Sofia are not supposed to be a “we”. He and Chris are the only “we” that should exist. Chris has spent all night wishing he had told his publicist to shove it when she said that he and Zach couldn’t be seen at the Nordstrom opening together, walking the red carpet together, cozying up next to each other at the fashion show. _Let him take Sofia, Chris. You two have to be more careful about how much time you spend together in public._

“You’re back awful late,” Chris says. He hates himself for saying it as soon as it comes out of his mouth, but that doesn’t keep him from continuing to vomit nonsense. “Did you two go for a drink after or something? I already walked the dogs, by the way.”

Zach stands up again and squints even harder at him. “Thanks. And…no, we didn’t go for a drink after. Is everything okay?”

Everything isn’t really okay, but Chris doesn’t know how to say that out loud without sounding like an idiot. He knows he’s being irrational, but that isn’t helping to alleviate the jealousy burning like acid in his stomach. Between filming long hours and splitting their time with the rest of the cast, it seems like the quiet moments he has alone with Zach are few and far between, and now apparently Sofia is going to be his new best friend and take even more of that time away. She already has earned the love of Noah and Skunk, which is a surefire way of getting your foot in the door with Zach. Plus, they have similar senses of humor, the same quiet confidence. They would make a great couple.

Fuck, Zach doesn’t even like women though. Why is Chris freaking out so much?

“Chris?” Zach prompts again, stepping closer. “What is it?”

In lieu of an answer, Chris grabs a handful of Zach’s shirt and drags him in for a kiss. It starts out firm and close-mouthed, but that isn’t enough, and Chris nips at Zach’s bottom lip to get him to open up, so he can slide his tongue into his mouth, taste the hint of champagne on his breath. Zach submits to it for a few moments—longer than Chris expected him to, really—then puts his hands on Chris’s shoulders and gently pushes him away a little, studying him with concern now.

“You’re going to have to use your words,” he says.

Chris shakes his head, licks his lips, trying to think of a way to stall for time a little longer. Zach has him trapped though, his fingers unyielding on Chris’s shoulders, his gaze soft but searching. There is nothing to do but come out with it.

“I love you,” Chris murmurs, heat rising in his face. “I love you, and it should be me going to parties with you and walking red carpets with you and…I don’t like that I have to sit around while you get all buddy-buddy with Sofia and—”

“Chris,” Zach shushes. “I love you too. You know I do. Sofia’s just a friend.”

“I know that, I do.” Chris brushes his fingers down the side of Zach’s face, then down his neck, stopping just above the collar of his shirt. He wishes he could burn his fingerprints into Zach’s skin, mark him as forever his. “That doesn’t make it any easier. I just…I want to be seen with you. I want everyone to know that…”

He trails off when he realizes what it is that he’s saying. Zach must realize it too, because a hopeful smile is playing at the corners of his mouth.

“You want everyone to know I’m yours?” he asks, a little breathlessly.

Chris does. Oh God, he does. So much. A desperate sound bubbles out of his mouth, and he leans in for another heated kiss, gripping the back of Zach’s neck and curling the other arm around his waist to draw him closer. Zach groans into it, his hands coming up to cradle Chris’s face.

“Wait,” he gasps against Chris’s mouth, then turns his head a little to break the contact. “Just so we’re clear, you’re saying—”

“I’m saying I want the world to know, Zach,” Chris confirms, scraping his teeth along Zach’s jaw. “I’m saying I’m tired of hiding. I’m saying I’ll have a chat with my agent in the morning.”

In the morning, but not now—because now, he wants to remind Zach that they belong to each other, whether the rest of the world knows it or not.


	49. Fashion Police

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A ridiculous bit of fluff written for an anon who wanted Zach asking Chris, "What the hell are you wearing?"

“What the hell are you wearing, Christopher?” is the first thing that Zach says to him. And with that tone of voice, one would think he had walked out of the airport in a garbage sack. 

“Well, fucking hello to you too.” Chris sets his sunglasses up on the bill of his hat and then shoves his hands in his back pockets to keep from reaching out for a hug. It has only been a week since he last saw Zach, but after spending so much time with him for the past few months, that week felt like ten years. He is dreading being separated from him for longer once it’s time to start filming for Wonder Woman.

Zach steps closer and gives Chris’s shoulder a squeeze, but his expression is still screwed up in distaste. “Seriously, I thought the stretched-out t-shirts and jeans that don’t fit was just a phase during filming. Like you got primped and prodded so much you just wanted to be a slob at the end of the day.”

“And now you know the truth. I want to be a slob always.” Chris’s grin is entirely unapologetic. There’s nothing wrong with being comfortable, right? And these days, who does he have to look good for? The paparazzi? Please.

“I can see your nipples through that shirt.” Zach tilts his head and narrows his eyes. “Come to think of it, I can’t remember the last time I couldn’t see your nipples through your shirt.”

That finally breaks through Chris’s bravado, bringing a flush to his cheeks. Maybe he has someone to look good for after all. Maybe he didn’t know Zach was looking that closely, and maybe he likes knowing it a little too much. With a huff, he shakes off Zach’s hand and brushes past him, toward the car. “Okay, are we going to stand here on the curb analyzing my wardrobe all day, or are you taking me home? I’m tired and I smell like plane, and I’ve been craving that Thai place near your apartment for ages.”

He throws his bag in the back and then slides into the passenger seat as Zach walks around the car and gets in on the other side. Zach glances over his shoulder, looking for a break in traffic, but once he has pulled away from the curb, he looks over at Chris, letting his eyes wander over him once more, briefly.

“You look good, actually. Rested. What’d you do, just sleep for the past week?”

“As much as I could,” Chris admits. “I had a lot of catching up to do.”

Zach is silent for a moment, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. Things seem oddly tense, a far cry from how easy and companionable things were during filming. It’s like they’re still trying to adjust to seeing each other in the real world. Finally, Zach lets out a little sigh.

“At least let me take you shopping while you’re here. Buy you a decent shirt or two.”

Chris chuckles and scrubs his palm across the stubble on his cheek. “Is it really that bad?”

Zach takes his eyes off the road for a moment again, and this time when his eyes crawl across Chris’s chest, Chris feels it like a physical thing. It’s all he can do not to shudder.

“It’s pretty bad,” Zach says. All traces of disdain are gone from his expression though. In its place is something harder to read, something Chris isn’t sure he wants to read. 

“If it’ll make you happy,” Chris says, shrugging. 

Zach faces forward again, but Chris can see his lips curling over his teeth, like he’s fighting a smile. He reaches across to slap Chris on the chest with his palm, a playful, familiar gesture. Chris isn’t sure why he still feels the heat of it there by the time they’ve pulled onto the highway.


	50. Attack of the Raspberry Vodka

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for the prompt "things you said when you were drunk".

“Sorry.” Chris pauses in his retching to look up at Zach through bleary eyes. “Fuck, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Zach.”

Zach can’t help but grimace. Chris’s face is sloppy with tears and snot, and when he wipes the back of his arm across it, he only succeeds in smearing the mess around. If he was sure the puking was all done, Zach would try to clean him up, but the last time he thought Chris had it all out of his system, he almost ended up with a lapful of blue vomit. Whose idea was the blue raspberry vodka? He hopes whoever it was is curled around a toilet right now too, and he also hopes they are hungover as fuck tomorrow. They deserve it.

“It’s okay,” Zach says, his hand rubbing soothing circles across Chris’s back, unperturbed by how his shirt is soaked through with sweat. “Man, you were really knocking those shots back like they were going out of style, huh? It’s alright. It happens to the best of us.”

Poor Chris is too distraught to be comforted, too full of the kind of sniveling, inconsolable anguish that only comes from being near-blackout drunk. “No, no, I’m so stupid.” He sniffs hard, then immediately drops his head so he can dry-heave weakly. When he speaks again, his slurred voice echoes off the toilet bowl in a way that would be comical if it weren’t so pitiful. “Oh fuck, I’m the world’s biggest idiot. Zach. Zach.”

Chris keeps saying his name, whining it, with his cheek pressed to the toilet seat and his fingers stroking the porcelain like it’s a beloved pet. A few more tears leak from the corners of his eyes. It’s heartbreaking.

“Shhh, Chris,” Zach soothes. “I’m right here.”

“No you aren’t.” Chris’s voice is plaintive now. His eyes are squeezed shut tight. “You’re not here.”

Even as his heart clenches, Zach can’t help but chuckle. “Yes, I am. I’m going to stay right here with you.”

“You’re not with me,” Chris insists. “You’re not. You’re with him.”

The world tilts suddenly, as if Zach is the one with too much raspberry vodka in his system. “What?”

Chris opens his eyes and looks directly at him, and suddenly Zach is very, very glad that he is not going to remember this in the morning. He isn’t sure they could come back from it otherwise—not with the adoration and longing in Chris’s expression, or the way his hand reaches out and grabs on tight to Zach’s shirt.

“Why don’t you want to be with me, Zach?”

Zach slumps against the cabinets, staring at Chris in disbelief. They aren’t supposed to talk about it. They were doing just fine not talking about it. Chris gets to live his perfect straight boy action hero life, and Zach gets to pretend he isn’t desperately, madly in love with him. It’s been working for years. Sometimes Zach can even convince himself that he’s imagining the way Chris looks at him, or convince himself that his own feelings have faded away.

Fuck, why won’t his feelings fade away?

“I don’t want to be with you because you’re a disgusting snot-monster,” Zach says with false brightness. Deflect, deflect, deflect. “Come here.”

He manages to get Chris to sit up straight enough that he can wipe his face with a wet washcloth, and then he carefully tugs him to his feet, stumbles them through the bathroom doorway so he can dump Chris in his bed. Luckily, Chris curls on his side and immediately starts to snore. Zach glances at the empty space beside him, then turns away. He can sleep on his couch tonight.

———

Zach peeks his head into the room in the morning and crows, “Rise and shine, princess!”

The noise Chris makes is like a cross between a groan and a death rattle. He raises one hand off the bed, middle finger extended in Zach’s direction.

“Aww, so harsh,” Zach laughs, “and to the man who kept you from braining yourself on the toilet last night. Way to be ungrateful.”

“Oh God,” Chris moans, rolling onto his back and covering his face with his hands. “Don’t tell me anything. I don’t want to know how much I humiliated myself.”

It’s all Zach can do not to sigh with relief. He doesn’t know what he said. He doesn’t remember. Thank God.


	51. Just Go With It

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for the prompt "things you said with no space between us".

“Is that a phaser in your pocket, Commander?”

Zach is actually relieved that Chris is acknowledging it. They have been plastered together for two whole songs now, and he is sure he was going to lose his mind if he had to pretend not be turned on for much longer. His hands have been resting very primly on Chris’s hips, his lips sucked in over his teeth to keep himself from leaning in and applying them to the tempting skin of Chris’s neck. His heart is pounding so loudly in his ears that he’s surprised he could hear Chris’s voice at all.

Because the thing is, Chris doesn’t seem to have any of the same kind of hang-ups about propriety as Zach does. He has been rubbing his ass shamelessly against Zach’s crotch, one arm curled back around Zach’s neck, the muscles of his back shifting against Zach’s chest. Though they both have a few beers in them, that’s really not enough to explain why Chris has suddenly turned into an evil tempting demon. When Zach looks over at the table where most of the rest of the group is sitting, Zoe raises her eyebrows at him in silent question, and all he can do is shrug. Whatever Chris’s game is, he has yet to enlighten Zach as to the rules.

“Sorry,” he says, tipping his head toward Chris’s just enough for him to hear him over the music. “I’m only human, dude.”

Chris turns his head sideways so Zach can see the way his mouth curls mischievously. The little minx. “Is that what this is? Just a normal human reaction?”

“Uh, yeah,” Zach insists. “I think even a straight guy would be chubbing up right now. You wanna, like—”

He starts to push Chris’s hips away, but Chris just spins in his arms and presses them chest to chest. This time, when their hips make contact, Zach can feel in no uncertain terms that he’s not the only one having an inappropriate reaction here. His hands settle reflexively on Chris’s ass, and when he realizes what he’s doing and starts to move them away, Chris grabs them and puts them back.

“Chris,” Zach warns. Because he is only human, and in a couple minutes he’s going to have to drag Chris off to the bathroom and risk burning their friendship to the ground.

“Zach,” Chris says cheekily. He wraps one hand around the back of Zach’s neck and leans in until their mouths are millimeters apart. “Just go with it, alright?”

“Jesus.” Zach closes his eyes and lets his forehead klunk forward against Chris’s. They should have a conversation. They should talk about what this means, whether it changes anything, whether it’s a good idea. But Chris is pressed against him from sternum to thigh, and he’s rolling their hips together insistently enough that Zach could probably come in his pants if he keeps it up, and he doesn’t think he could even pretend that he wants to stop right now. “You realize ‘just going with it’ might end up with you getting fucked in a filthy club bathroom, right?”

Chris’s laugh comes in a puff of breath across Zach’s mouth and a vibration through his chest. “I’m counting on it.”


	52. Not Cold Anymore

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This was written for Jouissant for the prompt "things you said when you were drunk". It's a WWII AU.

There might not be any atheists in foxholes, but there are quite a few alcoholics. Having been raised Catholic, Zach knows very well that those two things aren’t mutually exclusive, but that doesn’t mean the irony is lost on him. It’s the same with the racy photos Karl keeps tucked in his pockets or the fact that some men are keeping count of how many Germans they’ve shot. You do what you need to do to cope. God will probably forgive, given the circumstances. At least, that’s what Zach would believe if he could shake off the crushing guilt that he’s not sure he can blame entirely on too many Sundays and Wednesday spent fidgeting in a pew.

“I’m not so cold anymore,” Chris slurs, letting the flask slip from his fingers.

“That’s not a good sign, you know.” Zach reaches between Chris’s thighs and feels around until he brushes freezing metal. A quick shake tells him the flask is empty. “This stuff thins out your blood. Makes hypothermia set in easier.”

“S’okay.” It takes Chris two tries to snatch the flask back with hands that are shaky and stiff and uncoordinated. He tips it to his mouth again, squints at it, then turns away to shove it into his rucksack. He sways and lets his head thunk down heavily on Zach’s shoulder, his helmet butting up against Zach’s jaw, so cold it burns him.

“S’okay,” Chris repeats. “One a them shells’ll pro’ly get me first.”

Zach grits his teeth. Chris’s fingers are so white they practically blend in with the snow, and his lips are not much better. The first time Zach saw him, that mouth was as red as a dame’s, and now look at him. But at least he doesn’t feel it anymore, right? At least he doesn’t feel it.

“Come here,” he hisses, grabbing Chris’s hands roughly, like he’s angry—because he is—and bringing them to his mouth, cupping his fingers around them so he can blow into them. Warmth blooms for half a second at a time as Zach fights a losing battle with the cold air. But if all he can do is warm Chris up for half a second at a time, then by God, he’s going to do it.

By God? No, maybe not. The furnace of rage burning in his chest wasn’t imparted to him by God. Wrath is a cardinal sin. Will God forgive him this one? Will he see that it’s born of love and turn the other way?

Probably not, because the love is the wrong kind of love too. Zach is damned in every conceivable way.

“Tell me what you’re going to do when you get home, Pine,” Zach says. He nudges Chris upright with a shrug of his shoulder, then reaches up and palms the side of his face, shakes his eyes open. “Tell me. You got a girl?”

He goes back to blowing on their combined fingers when Chris finally opens those baby blues and peers blearily at him. “No, no. No girl. Well, not a human one. I left behind a real nice Chevy though.”

Zach snorts and crowds Chris’s fingers right up against his mouth, hoping he’s too drunk to notice if his lips linger a little longer than is strictly necessary.

“I could take you for a ride in it.” Chris’s fingers twitch. His eyes seem to focus, boring into Zach’s over the tangle of their hands. “When we get back. We could…”

Zach shakes his head, but it means ‘shut up’, not ‘no’. Chris seems to get that, because he draws in a shaky breath and flicks his tongue across his cracked lips before looking away.

“I’m not so cold anymore,” he says for the second time. But he doesn’t pull his hands away.


	53. Good News

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This was written for loves-pie for the prompt "things you said when you thought I was asleep".

Chris woke up at least ten minutes ago, but he’s not opening his eyes, not moving. It’s uncomfortable, laying with his head on Zach’s bony shoulder, the arm rest digging into his side, but he can’t resist taking advantage of the situation. Zach smells good, familiar, like home. Calling upon his acting skills, Chris twitches and whuffs and pushes his nose deeper into his neck in a way that he hopes comes across as sleepy restlessness.

“Well, isn’t this just the cutest?”

It’s Zoe’s voice, drifting back to him from her seat in front of Zach. She must have turned around to check on them, or to say something to them. Chris keeps his face placid and wills himself not to blush.

Zach hushes her. “Don’t wake him up.”

“Oh, you know he could sleep through an earthquake,” Zoe says. “Remember the first press tour? When he fell asleep in Karl’s room and Simon kept trying to convince us to do mean things to him?”

A quiet laugh rumbles through Zach’s chest, though he seems to be doing everything in his power not to jostle Chris. “Simon seems to be the only one who’s immune to Chris’s puppy-like cuteness.”

“Well, you certainly aren’t immune. Look at you.”

“Hush, Zoe.”

There is a moment of meaningful silence in which Chris desperately wishes he could open his eyes. They must be doing that thing where they communicate with their eyes. Communicating about what though?

When Zoe speaks again, her voice is barely more than a whisper, and Chris almost forgets himself and leans in to hear it better. “Have you told him yet?”

_Told him what?_ Chris thinks.

“Told him what?” Zach asks, though the tone of his voice says that he knows exactly what Zoe is talking about.

“Come on, Zach. You don’t have forever.” Zoe had that mom voice before she even became a mother, but now it’s even worse. Even Chris wants to crumble in the face of it, and it isn’t even directed at him. “The clock is ticking.”

“He’s staying with me in New York for a few days. I still have time.”

This is excruciating. Chris almost forgets to breathe, he’s focusing so hard on staying still and keeping his expression blank. _Come on, Zoe. Don’t let me down. Press him until he talks._

“And I know you, Zachary. You’ll come up with a million excuses not to do it, to put it off until it’s too late. It might already be too late! You’ve been keeping this to yourself far too long.”

“Well, I’m sorry,” Zach hisses quietly. “It turns out there’s no good way to tell your best friend you’re in love with him.”

Chris forgets himself and shoots upright, his mouth falling open in shock. Zach tenses, his jaw clenching, his eyes squeezing shut like he’s trying to rewind time and take back everything that just happened. But it’s too late.

“Oh, would you look at that. He’s awake!” Zoe’s voice is exaggerated and playful, and when Chris looks at her, she winks at him, then reaches out to give Zach’s knee a pat. “I’ll let you two talk.”

Zach lets out a long, quiet breath and then slowly turns to look at Chris, his eyes wary, his fingers gripping his own thighs. “I’m sorry. I didn’t—”

“Is it true?” The words come out strangled, and Chris can feel his cheeks flaming, but he doesn’t care. He just needs to know if he heard right, if he needs to curb the warmth spreading through his chest before it gets too big and bright.

“Do you…do you want it to be true?”

It’s a cop out—a patented Zachary Quinto cop out—but Chris can’t stop himself from nodding. “Yeah. Yes.”

It takes a moment, but the smile that spreads across Zach’s mouth is possibly the most beautiful one Chris has seen to date. Zach sways forward and curls his fingers into Chris’s shirt, pulling him close again. This time he minds the arm rest digging into his side even less.

Zach lifts a hand to his face and presses his thumb against his bottom lip, like he wants to feel Chris’s smile. “Well, I’ve got good news for you then.”


	54. First Blood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This was written for commodorecliche for the prompt "things you said through your teeth". WARNING: this is a serial killer husbands AU. There is blood, gore, sadism, murder, and lots of general darkness.

Chris has bitten open his bottom lip, and his tongue swipes across the fissure again and again, licking away the blood just in time for another bright crimson bead to well up in its place.

“Second thoughts?” Zach asks blandly. He holds the knife up in front of his face and examines the sharp edge of the blade with practiced, clinical indifference, as if his heart isn’t pounding in his chest, as if his skin does feel too small for his body.

“No.” Chris’s voice is thin and uncertain, but Zach chooses to ignore it. He had his opportunities to back out. The last one just passed him by.

“Come here.”

Chris approaches with slow, careful steps, until he is close enough for Zach to grab him by the wrist and jerk him close. He kisses him hard, sucking at his split lip until the taste of copper floods his mouth, making him groan. Making Chris groan too, though his comes out shakier and more ashamed. It’s okay. The shame will fade over time. Zach knows from experience.

“Turn around,” he hisses, and Chris does, obedient as always. Zach takes his hand and presses the knife handle into it, waiting with utmost patience when it takes Chris a few seconds to curl his fingers around it. Then, Zach wraps his fingers around Chris’s, so they are holding the knife together. He won’t make him do this alone, not his first time. His hand might shake and botch it. If there is one thing Zach can’t stand, it’s a sloppy kill.

“This is the best spot,” Zach says, guiding the knife up under their sleeping victim’s arm. The drugs were another precaution. If the man were squirming, whimpering, begging for his life, Chris might lose his nerve. Now that he thinks about it, Zach might like it better this way. This way, it’s just about him and Chris, the experience untainted by the input of a third party. He can focus on the sound of Chris’s ragged breathing and the way Chris’s pulse is fluttering where Zach’s thumb is curled around his wrist. He can focus on the quiet whine that works its way out of his mouth as Zach presses the edge of the knife into the man’s skin just enough for Chris to feel the resistance.

“Ready, baby?” Zach can’t resist taking the moment it takes Chris to answer to taste the skin at the back of his neck, which is cool and salty, clammy with nervous sweat. He is delicious. Zach licks again.

“Ready,” Chris whispers.

It doesn’t take much force. The knife is sharp and slices through the tender muscle with no trouble. Chris flinches, but Zach presses in harder, until their fingers are slippery, dripping, warm and wet. Chris flinches again, but Zach keeps their hands still as the blood flows and flows, seemingly without it. It’s a marvel how much blood the human body holds. And yet, it’s never quite enough to slake Zach’s thirst.

“Fuck.” Chris is shaking hard now, and leaning back against Zach like he can’t stand up under his own power.

“Tell me,” Zach growls. He nips the sensitive skin behind Chris’s ear, then nuzzles against his pulse point, imagining he can hear the rush of blood through his veins. “Tell me, Chris.”

“It’s…” He’s breathing so hard, so hard that Zach can’t hear anything else. “It’s…it’s…” He can feel Chris’s jaw clench. “Good.” He finally forces it out, between clenched teeth, a quiet sob. “It’s good. I…Zach…”

“That’s my baby.” He lets go of Chris’s hand and the knife clatters to the floor. Chris turns around in his arms and unthinkingly lifts his hand to smear gore down the side of Zach’s face. Zach hums his approval as he reaches between their bodies to palm Chris through his jeans, leaving sticky handprints on the fabric. Chris might seem conflicted, but his dick is not. This, he can’t fake.

Chris buries his face in Zach’s neck and pushes wantonly into his hand, crying out when Zach gives him a rough squeeze. Zach feels a rush of protective affection, and he lifts his gore-soaked hand to pet through Chris’s hair as he pulls him closer. After all this time, it seems impossible that he finally found someone like him, someone who sees this darkness inside him and wants it to swallow them too. A lump forms in his throat even as he grinds their hips together, pulling another moan from Chris’s lips.

“I love you, sweetheart,” he murmurs as he holds Chris closer, one arm around his waist, one warm, wet hand on the back of his neck.


	55. On the Table

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for the prompt "things you said with too many miles between us".

“I’ve gotta tell you, man, this dry spell is killing me.”

Zach snorts into the phone as he opens the door to his apartment and steps inside, flicking on the lights. “Well, this conversation just took a hard left turn.”

“Sorry. I just figured you’d understand. I feel like I’ve been filming for a year straight—”

“That’s because you pretty much have, Chris. I seriously hope you’re going to take a break after Wonder Woman.” Zach shifts the phone to his other ear so he can toss his empty coffee cup in the trash can and start rummaging around in the fridge for ingredients for dinner. “And by the way, you are allowed to fuck people while you’re working, you know. Just preferably not your co-stars.”

“I know, I know,” Chris sighs in his ear. “But after a fourteen-hour day of filming, the last thing I want to do is go out to a bar to cruise for chicks.”

Zach chuckles as he plops an armful of veggies down on the counter next to the cutting board. “Cruise for chicks? Christ. No wonder you can’t get laid. Hold on, I’m putting you on speaker. Gotta multitask.”

He presses the speakerphone button and sets his phone down. This has become something of a ritual for them since they finished shooting Trek. The phone calls don’t happen daily, as if by some mutual agreement, but they never seem to go more than three days. Now that Chris is in London, it’s been harder to talk because of the time difference, but they just tend to play phone tag until they get ahold of each other. It seems important somehow. The days they don’t manage to catch each other, Zach feels jittery and weird.

“I’m just saying, Zach.” Chris’s voice fills the kitchen now. It’s soothing. “It’s hard to meet people.”

Zach rolls his eyes at nothing while he busies himself with chopping up a pepper. “How can you be such an introvert and such a slut at the same time? I don’t get it.”

“Those two things are not mutually exclusive,” Chris says indignantly. “I just want to get off. Is that so much to ask?”

“Well, I’d offer my services, but…” Zach means it to be a joke, and he expects a laugh from the other end of the line, but a couple seconds of weird silence pass by instead. He pauses in his chopping and listens hard, trying to tell if the call dropped.

But then. “Honestly, I’d probably take you up on it.”

It takes a few seconds for that to sink in, but once it does, Zach sputters and whirls around to gape at his phone as if Chris could actually see him. “What?”

“I’ve just, uh…I’ve actually been missing being with men lately. It’s hard when I’m working so much, and I have to be careful. It’s…it’s been a long time, and I just…”

“So that’s it, then? It’s been a long time, so you’d even settle for me?”

“That’s not what I meant.” Chris sounds oddly solemn, and Zach has to snatch up the phone and take him off speaker, like that will somehow stop this conversation from feeling so weird.

“What did you mean?”

“I meant…” Chris pauses to sigh, and Zach grips the counter to brace for what comes next. “I meant that I think about you a lot. And I miss you. I meant that I really wish you were here, for a lot of reasons. I meant that if you ever wanted me that way…all you’d have to do is ask.”

“Oh,” Zach says dumbly. He’s stares at the wall, at a spot on the backsplash where the grout is a little dirty. He should clean that, he thinks. Maybe he should clean it now. Maybe that will stop his head from exploding. “You, uh…we couldn’t have had this conversation sometime when you weren’t about a million miles away?”

Chris lets out a nervous chuckle. “You can add ‘coward’ to your lexicon of my negative traits.”

“Lexicon,” Zach repeats. “Good word.”

“Zach, come on—”

“No, I…I don’t know what you want me to say, Chris. I’m kind of blindsided here.”

There are shuffling sounds on the other end of the line, and Zach wishes more than anything that he could see Chris right now. He has a feeling that if he could see him, he would know exactly what he wants. As a disembodied voice on the phone, Chris is just his friend, his best friend, one of the most constant things in his life. Maybe if he were here in the flesh and Zach could see him and touch him and smell him and—

“Look, let’s just…let’s say that it’s on the table. Me. I’m on the table. I won’t say anything else about it, and next time we see each other I’ll just act normally, but if you want something, all you’ve gotta do is…is let me know, okay?”

Zach takes a deep breath, then lets it out in a rush. “Okay,” he says shakily. “Okay.”

“Okay. Well. I’m going to go to bed before I can start to really freak out about how much I just fucked up—”

“You didn’t fuck—”

“—and I’ll talk to you later, okay? I’ll call you this weekend.”

Zach doesn’t think he’s lying. Chris might be a self-confessed coward, but he’s not a dick, and he’s not going to let their friendship fall by the wayside for something that’s not Zach’s fault—Zach knows that. In fact, Chris might be the only person in the world, aside from his brother, that Zach can’t imagine ever abandoning him. It’s comforting, but it’s also scary.

“Chris?” he says, before Chris can hang up and leave him with lonely static.

“Yeah?”

“I miss you too.”


	56. Take it Back

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for delicada for the prompt "things you said that I wish you hadn't". Warning, this is super duper saaaadd.

It’s perfect, for all of two minutes. Zach rests his forehead against Chris’s sweaty temple and breathes in tandem with him, his fingers still wrapped tight around his waist. If he has any say in the matter, he doesn’t plan to let go, doesn’t plan to move at all. They can lay right here, connected, until the world ends. After all, Zach thought it would be the end of the world before he ever got Chris in bed with him, so it’s only fitting.

Chris sucks in one breath that’s deeper than the others have been and palms the side of Zach’s face, pulling him in for a kiss that’s as ardent as it is sloppy. The sound that rumbles through Zach’s chest is pure bliss. He smiles against Chris’s mouth and then tucks his face into his neck, trailing kisses across his salty skin.

“Alright, Zach, you gotta move,” Chris rasps at him at last, through as slightly uneasy chuckle. Unfortunately it looks like Zach doesn’t get a say in the matter after all. He heaves a premature sigh of loss and then reaches down to guide himself out of Chris’s body. The moment he flops over next to him, Chris is popping up out of bed.

“Hey, wait,” Zach says, rolling after him as quick as he can, fighting heaviness in his limbs, and tries to snatch for his hand. “Come lay down. I’ll clean us up. Just give me a minute.”

“Nah, it’s okay.” Chris isn’t looking at him. “I’ll be right back.”

Zach is too consumed by his post-coital haze to argue. Maybe Chris is just really finicky about cleanliness. There are worse qualities for a person to have, even if it does mean less cuddle time. While the water runs in the bathroom, Zach throws his arm across his face and replays the night—the club, the dancing, the laughing, the come-hither glances. Chris leaning into him on the cab ride home. Chris letting himself be pushed against the wall in Zach’s foyer and kissed breathless. Chris tearing into Zach’s clothes like he was desperate for it. Zach would think it was all a dream if he wasn’t struggling to catch his breath, and if there weren’t a couple drops of Chris’s come on his stomach.

When the water turns off, he lowers his arm and turns his head toward the bathroom door just in time to see Chris emerge. He tosses a wet washcloth Zach’s way, and Zach catches it reflexively, one-handed, before frowning.

“Aren’t you coming back to bed?”

But Chris is picking his clothes up off the floor, and that pretty much answers that question, doesn’t it? Zach watches with increasing confusion while Chris hastily pulls on his underwear, then starts stepping back into his jeans. It isn’t until he’s buttoning his fly that Zach finally pops up on his elbow in alarm.

“Chris, what are you doing?”

Chris looks up, and all of a sudden it’s as if someone has squirted a syringe full of ice water into Zach’s veins. All of the warm happiness that was circulating through him a moment ago is replaced with frigid loss. The words Chris is going to say next are written all over his face, before he says them.

“This was a mistake, Zach.”

Anything but that. Zach wishes he would have said anything but that. He shakes his head, dumbfounded, unwilling to accept that this is happening, here, now, in the same universe as the one where Chris looked up at him with trust and affection and begged him to never stop. “But you….you…”

“I know,” Chris huffs. He runs his hand through his sex-mussed hair like he’s frustrated, which is really rich, when he’s the one stomping all over Zach’s heart. “I know, I know, it’s my fault, but I just—”

“No,” Zach cuts him off. The ice is gone now, and it has been replaced by fire—the angry kind. He gets up off the bed and yanks on his underwear, just so he doesn’t feel so exposed, but he’s too blinded by painful rage to dress the rest of the way. “No, you don’t get to do this to me, Chris. You don’t get to finally make me feel like I could have this and then just snatch it—”

“I can’t be with you!” Chris backs up all the way to the wall, thunking against it like he didn’t expect it to be there. And fuck, he’s crying. His eyes are wide and bluer than ever and swimming with tears, his mouth contorting into odd shapes as he clearly attempts to keep himself under control. “You know how it is. If people found out…”

“Oh my God.” Zach puts a hand to his forehead, but it doesn’t stop his vision from swimming. “You selfish fucking son of a bitch. So you thought you’d just get a little taste then, huh? Slum it with your gay bff for a night and then go back to living the straight life?”

“That’s not—”

“No, fuck you.” Zach wants to hit him so badly. A few moments ago all he wanted to do was wrap him up in his arms and keep him forever, and now he wants to sock him right in his pretty mouth. Maybe bloodying that bottom lip of his would make Zach forget how it tastes. “Get the fuck out of my apartment.”

“Zach, I’m sorry.” Chris is crying in earnest now—fat tears rolling down his cheeks, his breath shuddering. It would be better if he wasn’t. It would break Zach’s heart less if he was remorseless. But no, Chris can’t even give him this. A clean getaway. A slaughter of hope. “I’m so sorry. I thought maybe I—”

“No, you didn’t think.” Zach picks Chris’s shirt up off the ground and shoves it into his chest, then jerks away when Chris’s fingers brush his. “We’re done. We’re through. I don’t want to hear from you ever again. Delete my fucking number.”

He would physically drag Chris out the door if he could stand to touch him right now. Instead, he turns his back on him, waits for the footsteps to tell him Chris has left. It takes too long, and Zach’s breathing grows more ragged by the second. He just had to hold it together long enough for Chris to get out and not see him break down.

Finally, he can hear Chris move toward the bedroom door, a soft shuffle of feet on the carpet. There is a pause, and Zach braces for what comes next, but it doesn’t help.

“I’m sorry, Zach. I wish I could take it back.”

What a lovely final parting blow. Now Zach knows just how it feels to be Chris’s mistake.


	57. Recognition

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for elisa-pie for the prompt "things you said after you kissed me"

“Whoa.” Zach’s eyes are wide, his jaw slack with shock, as if he isn’t the one that just leaned in and pressed his mouth to Chris’s. “Shit, did I just…”

Chris lets him flounder for a moment, because he’s too busy savoring this moment. He can still taste Zach on his lips—red wine and cigarette smoke—and he can still feel the shape of Zach’s mouth against his. In a moment, they’ll have to talk about it, analyze it, pick it apart and put it back together in a way that makes sense, but for now it’s simple, just a first kiss, his first kiss with Zach. He lifts his fingers to his mouth and runs them across his lips, like he expects to find some evidence there. Surely things like this should leave a permanent, physical impression. A bruise. A scar. First kisses are indelible.

Obviously taking his silence and shock for distress, Zach pours out apologies. “I’m sorry, Chris, I don’t know what I was thinking. I just…how many glasses of wine have I had? I—”

“Zach, shut up,” Chris says. He closes his eyes, because if he doesn’t, he’s going to lean in again. First, he has to think. It’s not the right place. The bar is dark, but it’s also packed, and he has already noticed a couple phones pointed in their direction over the course of the night. He doubts anyone was lucky enough to catch that kiss, but they might catch the next one, or the one after that. This is the part where he should consider his career. Should. Fuck, ‘should’ is such a bullshit word. He’s cutting it from his vocabulary, as of right now.

He opens his eyes again and slides off the barstool, because he wants to be close this time, not leaning across the chasm between them. Zach turns toward him as if pulled by gravity, making it easier for him to slide right in between his legs. He takes Zach’s face in his hands and lets the moment settle between them this time, lets it sink in so they can both prepare to savor it. A small, cowardly part of him tells him he’s really doing it to give Zach a chance to pull away, in case he was telling the truth and he really is sorry.

But Zach doesn’t pull away, so Chris leans in.

This time, when his lips close over Zach’s, the involuntary gasp is not from shock—it’s from recognition. Recognition that this is something he has wanted to do for a long time. It’s funny how you can want something and not realize it until you have it. It’s funny how a person can function just fine with a part of them missing.

That smoke-and-wine taste is back, and when Zach’s lips part on a whimper, Chris searches with his tongue for more of it. Zach’s fingers curl into his shirt, but only to pull him closer. He lets out a rush of breath through his nose that would be a moan if his vocal chords weren’t thoroughly paralyzed, and he kisses him harder, wanting him to know that this isn’t impulse or too much wine or one of those bad decisions that you make based on a passing intrusive thought. This is real.

When they part, Zach doesn’t let go of him, and Chris doesn’t make him. He stands there patiently, hands still framing Zach’s face, and waits for whatever admonishment he’s likely about to get now. He can practically feel multiple sets of eyes on them, but he’s afraid to look. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. He already decided that it doesn’t matter.

“Okay,” Zach says at last, with a nervous little chuckle, “how many glasses of wine did _you_ have?”

“More than enough.” He leans in for one more peck, to punctuate the fact that he’s not taking that out. “Can we get out of here?”

Zach is reaching for his wallet before Chris even finishes his sentence.


	58. Sentimentality

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This was written for the prompt "things you said when you were crying" (it's fluffier than it sounds).

When Zach tastes salt, he pulls away, eyes wide with alarm. “Are you crying?”

Chris swipes at his wet cheeks like he can get rid of the evidence that way, but it’s too late. His eyes are wet and shining, and as Zach watches, another couple of tears spill out onto his cheeks, though those quickly get wiped away too.

“No, I’m not crying,” he says irritably, like there exists an amount of indignation that will force Zach to disbelieve his own eyes and the moisture on his fingertips.

“Chris…” Zach drops his overnight bag on the floor, forgetting all about the cab waiting down at the curb, and puts his fingers to Chris’s face again, this time to gingerly wipe away the tears and then caress his cheekbones for good measure. “What is it?”

Chris lets out a quick huff of a sigh and looks down, away from Zach. Redness is rising into his cheeks, and he has the fabric of Zach’s shirt all bunched up in his hands, even though he looks like he might be contemplating pushing him away. To say that Zach is confused would be an understatement. One moment they were kissing goodbye—just for tonight, just one night—and the next moment Chris goes all weepy on him? This has never happened before.

“You’re going to think I’m so dumb,” Chris mumbles. His eyelashes are dark and clumped, and Zach glimpses just the briefest flash of blue through them when he glances up and back down again. “I am being dumb. And…and sentimental. I’m sorry. Just…just kiss me again.”

He tries to tug Zach back in, but Zach isn’t going to give up so easily. He coaxes Chris’s fingers into releasing him so he can clasp his hands and raise them to his mouth, kissing his knuckles instead. There is a tremor in his voice when he asks, “You aren’t having second thoughts, are you?”

“No!” Chris snatches his hands back and loops his arms around Zach’s neck, dragging him in and kissing his cheek, his brow, the corner of his mouth, the tip of his nose, each kiss another reassurance—no, no, no, no second thoughts. Zach lets his eyes fall shut and soaks in the affection until it slows to a stop and Chris rests their foreheads together. “No, Zach, not even a little bit. I can’t wait to marry you.”

“Then what is it?” Zach murmurs, resting his palms on Chris’s chest.

Chris takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “I just…I think it only just sank in. That it’s happening tomorrow.” He backs off a little bit and looks Zach in the eye, finally. “I never thought this would happen to me, you know? I never thought I’d care about someone enough to take this step. And then…and then I fell in love with you, and I never thought you’d care enough about me to take this step. It…it just seems impossible. That I should get to be this happy.”

By the end of the speech, Zach is smiling, an affectionate chuckle rumbling its way out of his mouth. Leave it to Chris to be mostly stoic throughout the whole long process of planning the wedding and then break down the night before. To be fair to him, Zach never thought he’d want to get married either, but everything is different with Chris. Everything is different.

“Well, you’re right about one thing. I do think you’re dumb.” He sweeps his thumbs across Chris’s cheeks again, wiping away fresh tears. “Because you always deserved to be this happy. I count myself lucky that I get to be responsible for that happiness in any way.”

“You’re responsible for it in all the ways.” Chris’s voice has such gravity that Zach can’t help but giggle, earning himself an insincere glare.

“My sweet, sentimental baby,” he coos. Before Chris can grouse at him, he leans in and kisses him again, pouring as much adoration into it as he can. Chris’s mouth still tastes like the ocean, but his mouth curves into a smile against Zach’s, and that smile is all that matters in the world.


	59. Mourning is Lonely

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This was written for cardassiansunrise for the prompt "things you said when I suffered a loss". Warning for mentions of Leonard Nimoy's death.

Zach is laying on his side and staring at the doorway when Chris appears in it. His sudden presence wasn’t exactly expected, but it isn’t surprising either. There might have been a subconscious element to Zach’s decision to leave the door to the hallway open.

He watches as Chris crosses the room and climbs into bed with him, moving in close and resting their foreheads together as if this is something they do every day. He can’t look away from him, even though he is scared that too much might be showing in his eyes. Jet-lagged as he is from his sudden scramble to get home in time for Leonard’s funeral, and drained as he is from the roiling pit of grief in his stomach, he doesn’t have the energy to keep his expression placid. It feels like it might be twisted up with despair. If it is, Chris doesn’t even flinch in the face of it.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asks.

They talked a little on the phone, when Zach was at the airport trying frantically to get a flight that would make it back in time. Things were still surreal then. They are still surreal now, actually. Grief is something felt by degrees, doled out in bits and pieces that never come steady enough to be anticipated. It’s a cycle of forgetting of and remembering and hurting all over again.

“I don’t think so.” Zach swallows hard. “There’s nothing really to say, is there?”

Not anything that Zach would want to say, anyway. Some people in his position might want to reminisce. Some might want to wallow. Zach though, for all his articulateness, articulates emotions not well at all, and he is self-aware enough to realize that. Emotions embarrass him. He’s ashamed to be broken, to be human. He wonders if Chris knows what it means that Zach is letting him see him this way, that he didn’t get a room at a hotel instead so he could hide away from the world for a couple days.

“Is there anything I can do for you?” Chris asks, because of course he does. And he means it too—that much is clear. If Zach wanted the moon…

He lets out a rueful little chuckle at the thought, and his shoulders shake for long enough that he is afraid the huffs will lengthen into sobs at any moment. But they don’t. He manages to keep himself in control.

“No, Chris. Thanks, but…no.”

“Will you let me know if there is?”

“I will,” he says, but he doesn’t really mean it. Even if he needed something, he doesn’t think he’d be able to ask.

They fall silent, and Zach finally lets his eyes fall shut too, content that he can still feel Chris’s breath and Chris’s fingers, which at some point made there way to Zach’s chest to grasp the fabric of his t-shirt. Even if there is nothing he can do, his presence feels nice. It doesn’t exactly soothe him, but it’s a reminder that he’s not alone. Mourning is lonely—not just because of the ache of loss, but also because of the conviction that no one else could possibly understand. It’s a special kind of hell that you have to walk through alone.

“Zach,” Chris whispers, and at first Zach thinks that’s all he’s going to say—just his name and nothing else. But after a few more moments of silence, he swallows and keeps talking. “I haven’t stopped thinking about you, you know. How you’re doing. How you’re feeling. I thought about you sitting on the plane and trying to keep it together. I was laying in bed just now thinking about how strong you were today. I just…I want you to know that. You’re in my thoughts. And you’ll stay there. It’s…I know it’s probably cold comfort, but—”

“No, Chris,” Zach chokes out around the lump in his throat. His eyes are burning when he opens them again, and he has to blink rapidly to keep the tears back. He hasn’t shed many today. It feels like he needs to be careful about opening the floodgates, because he might never stop once he starts. “No, it’s not cold comfort. That…that means a lot to me.”

Chris sighs as if in relief and tilts his head to give Zach a chaste peck on the mouth—comfort or something else, Zach doesn’t know. It’s good, though. It helps.

He pulls Chris closer, and Chris comes willingly, wrapping his arms tight around him and moving to accommodate Zach’s face pushing into his neck. Zach breathes in deep, letting the familiarity and comfort of this one thing in his life that isn’t constantly in flux was over him.

Grief is lonely, but maybe he isn’t as alone as he thought.


	60. Too Many Margaritas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Itty bitty ficlet written for the prompt "Zach and Chris just waking up.. tangled in bed, facing each other noses touching".

“How’s your head?” 

Chris asks only because he doesn’t know what else to say. The part of his brain that is capable of processing how close Zach is to him right now, and how it’s still not close enough, is not going to wake up for at least another half hour, and that’s only if he manages to get some coffee in him. Plus, he is battling a little bit of pain behind his eye sockets himself. Too many margaritas. He would close his eyes, shut out the light, but he can’t look away.

“My…head?” Zach mumbles, like he isn’t even sure he’s in possession of a head at the moment. “I…oh, my head is….hmm…”

_Too many margaritas._ That is the only reason Zach is here, in his bed. Chris can smell the tang of hours-old alcohol on his morning breath. He can feel how surprisingly soft the hair on Zach’s shins is, where their legs are tangled together. This close, in the morning light, Zach’s eyes are almost amber. The strands of hair that fall into his face look like they would be soft to the touch. 

Chris doesn’t move.

“We can go back to sleep, if you want,” he offers. It’s so warm here, in this shared cocoon of blankets, where body heat has built up between them, helped along by their proximity. Chris clutches the sheet up under his chin, but it’s mainly to give his fingers something to do. “You don’t have anywhere you need to be, do you?”

Zach seems to consider that for a moment. Or to consider something. Maybe it’s not a question of whether he has somewhere to be. Maybe it’s a question of whether he wants to be here. His eyes move slowly across Chris’s face, like there might be some answer embedded in his skin, a clue hidden in his eyes. Chris just looks. And he’s still not moving. Zach’s breath tickles his lips.

“I don’t have anywhere to be,” Zach says at least. Then, deliberately, he tips his head forward a little more, until skin touches skin, foreheads and noses and…not lips. Almost, but not quite.

Chris lets go of the sheet and reaches out, until his hand finds the ticket of hair on Zach’s chest. The way he slides his fingers through it can’t be mistaken for anything but purposeful. “Will you stay then?”

There is a beat, then two, and then Zach tips his face again. This time their lips do brush, but it’s not a kiss. Not yet. Not yet, but Chris can feel the kiss that’s going to come already, as if it has already happened. When their hangovers fade, and they’ve remedied their morning breath, and they are dressed and standing in Chris’s kitchen, Zach will really kiss him then. Slowly, so they’ll both remember it.

“I’ll stay,” Zach says. He slings an arm around Chris’s waist and pulls him in closer, and Chris falls back asleep in no time at all.


End file.
